An Eatonton woman clocked speeding on the Eatonton Bypass who couldn’t keep her story straight with the officer, ended up being arrested and taken to jail for DUI.
“(She) made the spontaneous utterance of, ‘You know, I am wasted, and I should’ve done this,’” Officer Alex Rickey wrote in his report after noting that the woman’s breath alcohol content had tested 0.282.
“That’s more than three times the legal limit; I don’t know what she was thinking driving in that condition endangering other people’s lives in all that traffic,” Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell said.
Rickey was running radar on U.S. Hwy. 441 on Friday around 12:40 p.m. when he clocked the silver Toyota Camry traveling southbound at 91 mph and darting in and out of traffic. After making a traffic stop near Church Street, he identified the driver as Nickie Wells and noted in his report, “the strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from her person.”
When Rickey asked Wells where she was headed, she reportedly first told him she was heading to Madison to pick up her daughter, but then changed her story and said she was going home to get her phone that she forgot after making it to Madison. When asked, she replied that yes, she had consumed alcoholic beverages “around 1 p.m.”
“I asked Wells what time she thought it was and she stated 4 p.m., but it was 12:40 p.m.,” Rickey wrote in his report. When getting out of her car and walking to the back of it as instructed, Wells had to lean against her car to avoid falling over, Rickey noted.
Wells agreed to Standardized Field Sobriety Tests but failed every one of them, according to the report. A portable breath test resulted .267, and she was taken to the Eatonton Police Department to complete the test. There, she provided two successful breath samples of .282 on the Intoxilyzer 9000.
Nickie Michelle Wells, 57, of Crooked Creek Road, was charged with DUI and speeding 91/55.