After a police officer on patrol saw a 39-year-old Darien woman in an argument with a passenger in the Jeep she was driving, the officer pulled over the vehicle — then noticed indications the woman had been drinking, police said.
When she didn’t successfully complete standard field sobriety tests, she was charged with driving while under the influence, police said.
Darien police gave this further account of what happened (with additional information from a police spokesman added, as noted, to the original police announcement), including accusations not proven in court:
At 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the officer saw the Jeep stopped at a red light at the end of the Exit 11 southbound-traffic ramp (across the Post Road from Leroy Avenue).
When officer pulled his patrol car alongside the Jeep, he saw that the driver and a passenger in an apparent argument and decided to pull over the vehicle to make sure a domestic violence incident hadn’t occurred, a police spokesman said.
When the officer first attempted to pull over the driver, a police spokesman said, she had turned left and headed west (toward Stamford), drove on the Post Road under the highway overpass on the Post Road and began to enter the northbound-traffic exit ramp (near Jaguar of Darien).
The police officer had her maneuver the Jeep back to the Post Road. When he spoke to the occupants of the vehicle, they told him they had been in only a verbal argument.
The officer noted that both passenger and driver seemed to be under the influence of alcohol. The driver had the smell of an alcoholic beverage coming from her, and her eyes appeared glassy. She acted as if in a daze.
Asked if she’d been drinking, she said she hadn’t. When asked to step out of the vehicle for the field sobriety tests, she seemed to be unsteady on her feet. When she didn’t complete the field sobriety test correctly, she was arrested.
In addition to driving under the influence, she was charged with driving without her license, failure to renew her motor vehicle registration and improperly entering a highway.
At Police Headquarters, she declined to take a breathalyzer test and was released at 2:22 a.m. after posting a $25 bond. She is scheduled to appear Jan. 31 in state Superior Court in Stamford.