Crime & Safety
OWI: One Driver Loses a Wheel, Another Just Gets Lost
An impaired man tries to drive off on three wheels after hitting a light pole, and a woman hopes to get home but lacks any point of reference after nine hours of imbibing.
A Wauwatosa man told police he swerved to avoid a rabbit before crashing into a light pole on Stickney Avenue in broad daylight, but the 12 beers he admitted drinking the night before could have had something to do with it.
Police were called to the 8400 block of Stickney at 11:23 a.m. on May 19 on a report of the crash and a disabled pickup truck foundered on the wrong side of the street.
The caller told police she'd been walking on the sidewalk when the truck passed her, and a moment later she heard the crash and turned to see the truck grind to a halt. The driver got out and stumbled around the truck looking at the damage, then tried to get back in the driver's seat, she said, but she and other neighbors restrained him.
He wouldn't have gotten far. His right front wheel was still back at the scene of the crash.
The driver told a police officer he was on the way to the grocery store when a rabbit ran in front of him, and he repeatedly asked if he could just walk home since he lived nearby.
But the officer smelled alcohol, strongly, and noted that the suspect had glassy, bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and appeared to have wet himself. Asked if he'd had anything to drink, he said he'd drunk about 12 beers the night before but insisted he'd stopped around midnight.
He failed sobriety tests up to the point at which the officer stopped them for the suspect's safety, as he could not maintain his balance. He blew a .17 blood alcohol concentration on a breath test and was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, first offense.
'Plenty' to drink is more than enough
An evening of celebration ended at the police station for a woman who had just gotten her GED.At 12:05 a.m. May 24, the woman was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after she was stopped for speeding on North Avenue. An officer clocked her at 60 mph in the 30-mph zone in the 10100 block of North and caught up and pulled her over in the 9000 block.
The driver said she was trying to get home but she didn't know where she was or where she was coming from – and her passenger couldn't say either. Asked whether she'd had any alcohol that night, the driver said, "We had plenty."
She said she would try sobriety tests but was pretty sure she was "going to jail," then failed to complete the tests. She blew a .16 BAC. In a statement, she told officers she'd begun drinking around 2:30 in the afternoon and kept at it until just before she was stopped.
She was arrested on suspicion of first offense operating while intoxicated.
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