Posted by duijim in on December 24, 2012
Rhode Island Couple Charged with Separate DUIs on Same Night
A man in Rhode Island was arrested for a DUI this week while he was driving to the police station to pick his wife, who had just been arrested for drunk driving, according to a remarkable report from The Providence Journal.
Few details from the evening have been released, but the incredible story shows the dangers of driving drunk, even when drivers feel they have a valid reason to get behind the wheel.
Sources say 43-year-old Stephanie Souza, a resident of Warwick, Rhode Island, was pulled over by police last Friday night after she was seen driving erratically on Route 95 in the small town of Cranston.
After police encountered Souza, they saw several signs that she was intoxicated, so they took her to the state police barracks at Lincoln Woods and administered a blood alcohol test, which revealed that she was indeed drunk.
Once she was at the police station, Souza took the reasonable step of using her allotted phone call to contact her husband. Presumably, she was looking for her husband to bail her out of jail so she didn’t have to spend the night behind bars.
Unfortunately, her husband, 44-year-old Michael Souza, responded dutifully to his wife’s request, despite the fact that he was also drunk when he received the call.
Sources say Michael Souza drove as far as the town of Lincoln before he was stopped by police for what sources call a “motor vehicle violation.”
When police encountered the husband in his car, they detected signs of intoxication, and gave him a blood alcohol test, which revealed that he had been drinking before he got behind the wheel of his car.
To add a bit of symmetry to the whole sordid affair, sources say the husband was also taken to the Lincoln Barracks, where his wife was being detained. Sources do not say whether they encountered each other in jail.
A rough comparison of the couple’s blood alcohol levels at the time of their arrest reveals the husband to be the less responsible driver, although Stephanie Souza certainly isn’t without blame.
Sources say the husband’s blood alcohol level was 0.191 percent, which is more than twice the legal Rhode Island limit of 0.08 percent. Two tests given to the wife showed that she was somewhere between a 0.145 and 0.138 percent, both of which are also well above the legal limit.
The wife is scheduled to be arraigned on December 18, while her husband will be arraigned two weeks later.
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