Impaired Pewaukee Woman Abandons Car After Toppling Light Pole

A Pewaukee woman who cracked up her car in Brookfield just left it sitting in traffic, running – perhaps because she knew she was not in a condition to be driving at the time.

At 8:45 p.m. July 7, the 40-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, first offense, after a hit-and-run crash at Capitol Drive and Calhoun Road in Brookfield.

Police officers responded to a report of a disabled vehicle in traffic there and found a car stopped in a lane of traffic, still running but locked, and a light pole knocked down and lying in the turn lane.

Officers had to force entry to the car to move it, then tried to locate the owner. They found her Pewaukee address and asked the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office to contact her there.

Her husband told deputies she was not there but would have been driving the abandoned car, and he told them where he thought they could find her.

They did, and upon questioning, she said she had been cut off by another driver and had hit the light pole after swerving to avoid a collision with the other driver.

However, officers interviewing her sensed a “moderate” odor of alcohol and noted she had glassy, wandering eyes. They asked her to perform sobriety tests, which she failed, and she refused a breath test of her blood alcohol concentration.