TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee woman has been charged with DUI and child neglect after officers found her passed out behind the wheel of her car while two young children were locked inside.
Me'Yonne McAllister, 28, was arrested Monday.
According to arrest documents, Tallahassee Police officers were dispatched to a Basin Street address on Monday for an unresponsive woman behind the wheel of a vehicle. The caller advised that there was a small child locked inside the car.
When officers arrived, they found McAllister asleep in the driver's seat with the car key in her lap. Documents note her seatbelt was on.
Officers say a 2-year-old child was standing up in the back seat screaming with tears running down the child's face. According to documents, an "extremely small" infant was also found unsecured in a car seat.
"Officers smacked the windows, shined flash lights into McAllister's face, and yelled for her to wake up," investigators wrote. Despite their efforts, McAllister took seven minutes to wake up.
Once she woke up, McAllister and the children were put in an ambulance. Investigators say the one-month-old infant was crying and shivering and had a diaper that was swollen and soiled.
Officers note that it was 47 degrees outside when they found McAllister and the children.
Inside the ambulance, documents say McAllister was completely disoriented and did not know the day of the week or the time. She didn't know couldn't tell officers were she lived, saying she lived at one address but she lived at another about a mile away. McAllister also continued to ramble the same things over and over.
In McAllister's car, officers said they found no diapers, wipes or formula for either child. Eventually, a soft blanket was found and brought to the baby.
During the investigation, officers learned the front side of the car had crashed into residential mailboxes on Basin Street, damaging both the mailboxes and the car.
While en route to Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, McAllister continued talking, saying at one point that she had drank two cups of vodka before she left to pick up the children.
Lab tests revealed that McAllister did not have any illegal drugs in her system but alcohol was present, the court document said. Hospital staff told officers that her blood alcohol level was .282, which is 3.5 times the legal driving limit.
Investigators said that McAllister didn't have any recollection of picking up the children from the daycare, driving or crashing the car. She also didn't seem to remember being woken up by officers or being taken to the hospital.
Documents say McAllister managed to tell officers that she was drinking because she was stressed out and she said she was "wrong" for drinking and driving.
She faces two charges of neglect of child without great bodily harm and two DUI charges, one for unlawful blood alcohol 0.15 or higher or with a person under 18 in a vehicle and the other for unlawful blood alcohol with damage to property or person of another.
