On Sunday, July 16, at 9:50 a.m., officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were flagged down by a citizen who told them that there had been a traffic collision at the intersection of Fourth Street and Pico Boulevard. The citizen told them that a female driver was involved, so the officers went to the scene to investigate.
When the officers arrived at the location they saw a red Honda Accord that was stuck on the center median in the 1900 block of Fourth Street. The female driver was standing next to the vehicle and making a call on her cell phone. The officers approached the driver and as they were doing so she told them that she had crashed because she had been texting.
The officers read between the lines of her story and also detected the odor of alcohol on her breath. The woman admitted that she had been drinking the night before (a lot?), and so the officers conducted sobriety tests upon her, and she failed them.
This 34-year-old resident of Valley Village was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. Her bail was set at $15,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com
