- November 19, 2024
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A Palm Coast resident was in her Richmond Drive home the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 25, when she heard two loud bangs and a crash.
She walked outside to find a car crashed into several mailboxes and a fire hydrant; it then veered into the tree line and struck a tree, according to a Flagler County Sheriff’s Office charging affidavit.
She walked up to the car, where driver Luis Ramirez was trying to switch it into reverse, and asked him if he was okay.
As she backed away from the car, she saw him throw a bottle into the woods.
Several deputies spoke to Ramirez, one of them asking if he wanted his car towed. Ramirez answered the question, repeatedly, by reciting his phone number.
One deputy asked Ramirez for his driver’s license, and he reached into his wallet and pulled out his debit card. The deputy told him it wasn’t the right card, and he tried again and came up with a Kohl’s card. He got it right on the third try.
The deputy smelled alcohol on Ramirez’s breath and asked him to lean against a patrol car, fearing he’d fall and hurt himself.
Another deputy, the one who filled out a charging affidavit, wrote that he asked Ramirez to take a sobriety test, but Ramirez refused.
The deputy took Ramirez into custody, and Ramirez “was staggering and swaying and needed to be directed to my car,” the deputy wrote.
Deputies found a 1.75-liter bottle of Coulson’s vodka in the woods less than 10 feet from the car.
A cup in the car’s center console smelled of booze.
Deputies determined Ramirez struck a basketball goal, three mailboxes and a fire hydrant before the tree.
They charged him with driving under the influence , with property damage and with refusing to submit to testing.
Driver swerves into mailbox, grass and Rymfire Elementary campus
An SUV swerved and jolted down Ruth Drive Thursday, Feb. 27 — striking a mailbox on the way and swerving in and out of the grass — then turned into Rymfire Elementary School.
A woman who saw it called the Sheriff’s Office and described the car as deputies drove out to the scene, according to an arrest affidavit.
She said the SUV hit two curbs on the school campus then pulled into the bus loop.
When a deputy got there, the driver, a 44-year-old woman, was playing with her cell phone.
Her speech was slurred as she gave her name, the deputy wrote, and when she stepped out of the car, she fell back and grabbed onto the door to stabilize herself.
When he asked her why she was there, she said she’d just dropped her son off for an evening school meeting.
The deputy asked her if she’d had anything to drink that evening. She said no. He asked her if she knew she’d hit a mailbox. She said no. He asked her if she had any medical issues. She said no, and that she was fine, according to the affidavit.
He told her she couldn’t stand still and maintain her balance, and she said that was just the way she stood.
He asked her to take a field-sobriety test, and she consented. But when she tried to walk a straight heel-to-toe line, she couldn’t make it one step without either failing to touch her heel to her toe or stepping out of the line, according to the affidavit. She had no luck with a second try or a one-legged stand test, either. She couldn’t keep one foot off the ground when she tried.
The deputy asked her if there was anyone else who could pick her son up after his school meeting, and she called a relative. They arrived, and she gave them permission to take her son home.
The deputy then placed the woman under arrest “for suspicion of DUI,” according to the arrest affidavit, and placed her in his patrol car.
He took her to the Flagler County jail and had her take a breath-alcohol test, and she passed, with the breathalyzer showing no trace of alcohol.
But she refused to take a blood or urine test, and then she asked for a lawyer.
Deputies took her to Florida Hospital Flagler for medical clearance, and staff there drew her blood. The deputy who arrested the woman wrote in her charging affidavit that he will “contact the State Attorney’s Office about subpoenaing the blood for content of narcotics.”
The woman was taken back to the Flagler County jail and given a Uniform Traffic Citation for refusing to submit to a blood or urine test.
