HOT PURSUIT
Police officers are always on the lookout for intoxicated drivers, especially around certain holiday periods like Labor Day back in September and now the upcoming Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
From mid-August through the Labor Day weekend, officers, troopers and deputies from 250 agencies across Minnesota arrested 1,235 motorists for impaired driving, according to the Department of Public Safety. Of those arrests, two of them, including a man from Steele County, produced eye-popping blood alcohol levels.
Daniel Montes, 27, of Sebastian, Texas, has been charged with gross misdemeanor DWI by the Steele County Attorney’s Office. He is alleged to have had a staggering blood alcohol concentration of .409, which is just over five times the legal limit to drive.
A Steele County sheriff’s deputy responded to a report of a person sleeping in their vehicle at 92nd Avenue and 48th Street SW on Aug. 28 at about 5:30 p.m. When the deputy arrived, he found a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road at the intersection with the “driver clearly asleep,” the complaint said, noting the vehicle was running and determined to be in park.
The deputy saw multiple open Tito’s bottles on the floor of the truck in the rear seat footwell area. Clearly unfazed as to what was happening, the motorist continued his slumber with the deputy knocking on the window multiple times and yelling for him to wake up.
Once he provided a weak breath test on a portable device showing a reading of .401%, the deputy wisely arrested Montes. Nothing was mentioned in the complaint about administering field sobriety tests, presumably because the man was too drunk to even attempt them.
Montes was taken to Owatonna hospital, and after a search warrant was granted by Judge Karen Duncan, a hospital technician withdrew blood from Montes for a blood test to offer a more precise reading of his alcohol level.
A criminal history on Montes shows he has one prior DWI related offense in Texas in 2018.
It may come as a surprise that Montes’ eye-popping level wasn’t the highest in Minnesota over the Labor Day weekend. A 60-year-old woman in Eagan topped the charts with her astonishing alcohol level of .443%, more than 5½ times the legal limit. Police responded to the woman sitting in the road with a lawn chair. Residents there provided her with the chair after she hit several parked vehicles and passed out.
Amazingly, these two eye-poppers survived, and perhaps even more staggering is that they didn’t hurt or kill anyone else. A blood alcohol concentration of .40% or higher is considered by medical experts as lethal and can result in death.
There were some other crazy cases around the state. One was a driver in Rochester who was going 57 mph over the speed limit with a blood level measured at .32%. During the same period, a trooper in the Duluth area stopped a motorist for traveling 121mph while drunk.
Next Wednesday, the eve before Thanksgiving, has long been considered a big drinking night often referred to as “Blackout Wednesday.” There’s a spike in drunk driving incidents. It’s also the official start of the “DWI Season,” which runs until New Year’s.
Don’t try to be a hero and top the charts with numbers that Montes and the Eagan woman put on the books back on Labor Day. Nothing good becomes of those who choose to drink and drive.
Let’s all go in hot pursuit of staying safe and not climbing behind the wheel drunk over the upcoming holidays. Drunk drivers have absolutely no business to be on our roadways!