An Astor woman was arrested for DUI after crashing into a ditch and admitting to drinking three or four glasses of wine.
A deputy responded to a crash at the intersection of State Road 40 and Butler Street at 9:50 p.m. Sunday, according to an arrest report from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. Dispatch received a call from a man saying a vehicle drove off into a ditch, and the driver, later identified as 65-year-old Margaret Anne Curtin, was unconscious.
Upon arrival, the deputy met with the caller who stated he saw Curtin, the driver of a black BMW passenger car, stop at the stop sign at Butler Street. The car slowly went across State Road 40 and then down into the ditch. The caller went to the driver’s door of the vehicle and discovered Curtin slumped over the steering wheel, the report said.
The caller tapped on the window, and Curtin woke up. She tried to drive out of the ditch before EMS and law enforcement arrived, the report said.
The deputy found Curtin sitting in the back of an ambulance being checked out by EMS staff. She refused to be taken to the hospital and stated she only had a couple glasses of wine. She specified that she might have had three or four glasses of wine, the report said.
The deputy could smell the odor of alcoholic beverages coming from Curtin. When he approached Curtin, her eyes had a glassy appearance. Once she made it to Waterman Hospital, they became bloodshot, the report said.
The deputy had to keep repeating instructions and questions to Curtin, and her responses were slurred and difficult to understand. She also kept repeating herself. She was very unstable when walking and stated she did not have any recollection of the crash. While at the hospital, she would repeat things she had already said and was going back and forth between being angry and crying while being talkative the entire time, the report said.
Curtin was directed to move to a parking lot for field sobriety exercises, but she turned away and fell down into the ditch. She proceeded to repeat, “Look at me,” but would not elaborate why. She did not want help getting out and eventually went to the parking lot for the exercises, the report said.
Curtin was unable to follow instructions while doing the exercises. She could not stand with her feet together during one exercise and continued to not follow directions during others. At one point, she stated, “It’s hard. I’d like to see you do it.” The report noted that she voluntarily took her shoes off before starting the exercises and did them with bare feet.
While enroute to Lake County Jail, the jail nurse advised that Curtin needed to be cleared medically. AdventHealth staff recommended she have blood drawn before the court requested it, and she consented. She appeared to sober up quickly at the hospital and made more sense than earlier. She stated she could have been slipped some sort of narcotics while at a bar, the report said
Curtin later provided breath samples of 0.108 and 0.103, the report said.
The New York native was charged with DUI and taken to jail. She was released after posting $1,000 bond.