Samantha Wilson, a 22-year-old woman, was put in custody after she crashed her car at 4 p.m. on a Sunday. She was arrested when police suspected her of drunk driving, and that is when the real excitement began.
According to the NWF Daily News, notes from drunk driving police say that Wilson, whose hands were handcuffed in front of her, quickly slipped out of them the first time. Police re-handcuffed her, and put her in the front seat of a police cruiser.

But while highway patrol trooper Ken McNabb was putting her seatbelt on, Wilson, having once again freed herself from the handcuffs, punched him in the head.

McNabb was able to get the door of the cruiser closed, but Wilson escaped from her handcuffs again, and let herself out of the car. It was about then that she dropped her trousers and began to relieve herself next to the police vehicle. Her husband arrived soon after, pleading with her to stop urinating and pull her pants back up.

Wilson was restrained again and put back into a patrol car. On the way to the police station, according to McNabb, Wilson yelled and screamed, asking to see her husband while kicking at the windows behind the officer’s driver’s seat.

She then proceeded to remove her shoes and pants so that she was naked from the waist down. “She stated that she was going to urinate on my seats before launching into a shouting tirade,” said Deputy Randolph Grob.

Then Wilson, already on her way to jail on suspicion of DUI in Florida, began to slam the plexiglass divider with her handcuffs. She had taken them off again and put them on her fist as though they were a pair of brass knuckles.

The officer stopped the car because he thought Wilson would break through the glass, and when he opened the door to the back seat, she punched him in the nose again. He didn’t remove her from the car because he thought he might hurt her, so instead he was able to force the door closed and radio ahead to the police station to have a female officer ready for her arrival.

Once at the jail, officers had to forcibly remove her from the car amidst her continued punching.

One is a Grammy winning songwriter, producer and actress best known for her soul-pop music, and the other is a one-time teen heartthrob slated to appear in a film about Liberace.

Singer and Grammy-winner Faith Evans pleaded no contest to DUI charges in a Los Angeles courtroom recently, following a DUI arrest back in August. The Grammy Award-winner was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Marina del Rey on August 21 at around 10:40 p.m.

Evans was subsequently arrested for suspicion of misdemeanor drunk driving. As a part of the no contest plea, Evans will serve three years of probation, pay $300 in fines, agree not to drive with any alcohol in her system and undergo a 3-month alcohol treatment program, according to the Baltimore Sun.

She pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor count of reckless driving.

Evans, well-known after she arrived on the pop music scene in the mid-90s, tweeted to her fans following the DUI arrest, telling them that “After completing a full day of wardrobe prep I was stopped at a random checkpoint. I’m fine and well, and thank you for your prayers, kind words and concerns.” She signed the tweet “- Fizzy.”

Evans and her husband were arrested for drug possession charges in 2004, for which she entered a drug abuse treatment program.

Teen idol David Cassidy also faced DUI trouble recently, when he was arrested for drunk driving in Florida, according to the LA Times.

Cassidy has a court date in mid January for charges that he failed a field sobriety test at around 6 in the evening. Police reportedly witnessed Cassidy weaving on the road and making an erratic lane change.

A Breathalyzer test came back having registered a .141 and a .139 blood alcohol content for the singer and actor.

Cassidy pleaded not-guilty to the charge. He admitted that he was tired, and that he had a glass of wine with lunch and took a hydrocodine pill for back pain.

According to police, there was a bottle of bourbon in the back seat that was half empty.

Cassidy faces a misdemeanor charge of DUI, failure to maintain a single lane and driving with an open container.

The Florida DUI trial has most recently featured the testimony of a witness who testified that Leyritz ran his Ford Expedition through a red light and hit the SUV driven by Fredia Ann Veitch, killing her.

The witness, a bouncer at a bar in Ft. Lauderdale, claimed that Leyritz appeared to be trying to make it through the intersection before a yellow light turned red. He didn’t make it, said the accident witness, as reported by the New York Daily News.

The accident took place in December of 2007, at just after 3 in the morning. Henry also said that Veitch had the green light as she entered the intersection. “She didn’t have to stop because it was green,” he testified.

Henry was cross-examined regarding the timing of his witnessing of the accident, and he did offer that he looked up to see the incident only after he heard brakes screeching nearby.

Some evidence in the case, namely that there were no skid marks before the intersection, could shed some doubt on the timing claimed by Henry. There were screech marks on the road after the traffic lights, which may suggest that Henry did not see what the state of the traffic lights was at the time that he started viewing the incident.

According to the prosecution, Jim Leyritz had been out on the town, taking shots of vodka and tequila to celebrate his birthday when he took the wheel. His blood alcohol content was measured at .14 percent, which is almost double the legal BAC limit of .08.

Leyritz has pleaded not guilty to the DUI charge and to vehicular homicide. If he is convicted of the crime, he could face 15 years in prison.

In addition to Henry’s testimony, the prosecution has said that another witness, a passenger in Leyritz’s vehicle, would also testify that Leyritz ran the red light.

Other evidence in the trial includes testimony from witnesses who say that Leyritz did not appear intoxicated following the accident. One of those witnesses is a police detective.

Prosecutors will counter those accounts by asking jurors to look at police video of Leyritz’s field sobriety test.

“What you will see is a man who is being given instructions and can’t follow those instructions, even though he is not falling-down drunk,” prosecutor Stefanie Newman told the jury.

Leyritz had previously settled a civil suit with the family of the victim, though he did not admit any liability.

Baby On Board

It is all too common in the world of DUI news to hear about a parent’s use of poor judgment. Not only do they allegedly drive drunk, but they do so with a child in the car with them.

In Fort Myers, Florida, Brittney Locke is charged with DUI and other crimes, after police say she was stopped on the interstate while driving under the influence, according to ABC 7.

According to police, Locke was stopped after witnesses called police, having witnessed an accident on the highway. The driver left the scene, witnesses said, and police found Locke parked along the side of the road near an exit, with metal sheared off the side of the car.

She also had an infant in the car with her, in a car seat.

Police noted that she appeared to have trouble keeping her eyes open, and said she didn’t know what she’d hit to cause the damage to her car. She failed a field sobriety test.

She claimed to be on the way to see the child’s father, to get money from him. She also told police she was exhausted, and that she had to be up early to visit an area methadone clinic as a part of addiction treatment.

Police allegedly found a Xanex tablet in the car, a prescription bottle of ibuprofen and a plastic straw that, according to ABC, “appeared to be coated with drug residue.”

A relative took control of the child. Locke is charged with DUI, DUI property damage for the guard rail she allegedly hit, child cruelty, drug possession and drug equipment possession.

A 3 DUI Charge Night

According to KGMI in Whatcom County, Washington, a man is facing 3 DUI charges after a single night of activity.

Tommy Ryser allegedly wrecked his pickup truck on the road, where police found it at around 8 p.m. on a Monday night. Then, police received a call that another accident had been reported.

It was a red VW Golf that had crashed into a guardrail.

Who pulled up to that accident site but Ryser, driving a tow truck. He had a cut on his face, according to police, and was found to be intoxicated.

According to KGMI, Ryser was arrested for and charged with crashing both disabled vehicles, and with driving drunk to the crash sites, in order to tow them back home.

Just such a situation has arisen in the city of Cape Coral, Fla., where a group of downtown bar and restaurant owners were concerned that the frequency of local police’s DUI checkpoints was hurting their businesses, according to a report from ABC 7.

Along the Cape Coral Parkway, an area filled with numerous bars and restaurants, DUI checkpoints were becoming a more and more frequent sight.

While the flagging economy may certainly have contributed to slow business at some of these restaurants, local business owners have recently voiced the suspicion that the DUI checkpoints may also be hurting their bottom line.

Leapin’ Lizards is a bar in the area that has experienced just such a lag in business. Bar owner May Ann Evans told ABC 7 that, rather than the economic conditions, customers are deterred by the police presence on the roads: “They’re just not going through the aggravation. They will avoid going to an area that’s just plagued with constant checkpoints.”

Evans and other business owners in the area have asked police to help find an alternative to the checkpoints that will maintain safety on the roads without compromising businesses in the area.

Recently, according to the report, local police have stated a willingness to massage their strategy by way of compromise.

Cape Coral Police Chief, Rob Petrovich, recently told the media that he is open-minded about compromise, and that he is considering saturation and foot patrols, which help deter drunk driving in a way that bar and restaurant owners consider to be more amendable to business.

“My dream,” Petrovich told ABC 7, “is for their parking lots to be full, for them to be fruitful and at the same time – everybody be safe.”

One local owner welcomes the new strategy. “Hopefully they’ll cut back a little on that and there will be a more personal relationship with the officers rather than a show of force kind of deal,” said Ed Sheridan, the co-owner of Eddie Fishbowls.

The bars and restaurants in the area have agreed, in turn, to explore creative ways to help prevent drunk driving, like taxi shares.

The police said that Michael Trotter Shaffer, 28, had a blood alcohol level of more than four times the legal limit.

Shaffer was arrested around 2pm after being pulled over by a deputy monitoring traffic in front of an elementary school.

The breath tests registered his blood alcohol level at .376 and .367.  The officers charged Shaffer with a DUI, driving with license revoked-habitual offender, battery of a law enforcement officer and obstructing or opposing an officer.

The Star-Banner earlier reported that the Florida Highway Patrol had responded, in January, to a single-vehicle crash. They found Robert Lewis Wilson pinned beneath the vehicle. Witnesses told investigators they had seen a man jump out of the truck and try to help Wilson, but that the man had run away.

Five hours after the crash, police went to Ballinger’s home and drew blood.  His blood alcohol level was 0.05 percent, five hours after the crash.

A Florida Department of Law Enforcement toxicologist testified Ballinger’s BAC could have been above legal limit for DUI of 0.08 percent at the time of the crash. The Star-Banner’s article does not indicate whether Ballinger argued he had drank alcohol following the crash.

It appears that convincing juries that a driver was DUI when his measured BAC was below 0.08 percent is becoming increasing difficult.

Brock was fired after an internal review found he had arrested 58 people with a blood alcohol level (BAC) below the legal limit for DUI in Florida, often without evidence of suspicious driving actions, positive urine samples, or videos to back his arrests.

Brock had forced a particular DUI suspect to give a blood sample after a crash without serious injury. A blood draw is only allowed if authorities have evidence that someone sustained “serious bodily injury” in the crash.

The driver’s case was dropped without even filing charges.

Mark L. Tearney offered two Brevard County Sheriff’s deputies $500 to take a breath test in his place. He has been charged with two counts of bribery, along with a misdemeanor DUI offense and a citation for speeding in an enhanced penalty zone.

The officers were watching for speeders in a construction zone when they clocked an SUV doing 106 mph.

Allegedly, during field sobriety tests, Tearney said, “I know this is a stupid question, but what if I gave you each $500 to take the test for me.”

Tearney has two previous DUI arrests.

Police report that La Russa had been stopped for two green lights and vehicles were going around him to get through the intersection. He was found with his head on the wheel and his foot on the brake and did not immediately respond when a Jupiter police officer knocked on his windshield.

The 62-year old La Russa had a blood alcohol level (BAC) of 0.093 percent, just above Florida’s legal limit for DUI.