School bus driver charged with DWI says bad doughnut was to blame for her erratic driving
A school bus driver in Houston, who the authorities say drove drunk while there were children on board, has now blamed her bad driving on a doughnut that allegedly caused an upset stomach. 55-year-old Linda Sue Godejohn was charged with driving while intoxicated after the authorities said she failed a field sobriety test "miserably" when they pulled her over in Spring, Texas, on Thursday, May 30, afternoon.
Fox News reported that Godejohn has since posted a $100 bond and was released from the Harris County Jail on Friday, May 31. Constable Mark Herman told Houston's KPRC-TV: "We ended up getting the bus driver out of the bus, giving her a field sobriety test, which she flunked miserably, and she was immediately placed into custody."
Bystanders have said that they noticed that her bus was moving erratically and immediately called 911. A witness to the incident said that the bus swerved to the left shoulder of a road and hit a divider before it veered back. One witness told KPRC: "When she hit the wall, I was, like, 'Woah, she's about to flip,' because it wasn't just a little tap, she was on the wall, the tire started to crawl up on the wall."
The authorities said that they pulled Godejohn over when they noticed her making a sharp turn with the bus that almost caused it to roll over. Godejohn made a statement to reporters as she left the jail saying that she hadn't had alcohol in years and blamed her decision of eating a doughnut earlier in the day.
She said: "My stomach was just hurting so bad that a wheel fell off the thing, the curb. That's all it was, and going 45 mph, it’s going to whip back." When she was asked about the field sobriety test that she failed, she replied: "Because it's hard, I mean I couldn't even do it right now."
The authorities say that Godejohn was transporting at least 30 students from YES Prep Public Schools' North Forest campus when she was pulled over. She told reporters that the parents of the students should not worry because their kids have been riding on her bus through the year and "nothing has changed".
Harris County District Attorney's Office has said that it plans to upgrade the charge to driving while intoxicated with a child passenger. Sean Teare of the district attorney's office said: "We discovered that one of the children on the bus was under the age of 14, which triggers a higher charge a felony charge for DWI."
The company that employs Godejohn, First Student, said that she will be removed immediately from service pending the result of the on-going investigation. Even with those charges, the authorities won't know if she was driving while intoxicated until the results come back.
Teare said: "Until we get the blood back, we're not gonna know what the actual cause of her impairment was. Rest assured it was not a doughnut."
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