Warwick, RI — A Warwick woman faces a DUI charge after another driver flagged down local officers on Providence Street on Feb. 16 at about 7:15 p.m.
According to police reports, Ofc. Jason Cooke was traveling south on Providence Street when he saw a car flashing its headlights and its driver beeping the horn “repeatedly.”
When Cooke stopped his car to talk with the driver, she said that she had been behind another car that had been “swerving all over the road and hitting snow banks on the side of the road,” Cooke wrote in his report.
Cooke then turned his cruiser around and followed the second car, which had turned onto Pontiac Avenue headed toward West Natick Road.
After seeing the car again strike a snow bank and cross the center yellow lines, Cooke reported that he stopped the car, driven by Sandra Mariorenzi, 52, of 300 Lambert Lind Highway.
Cooke reported that Mariorenzi’s “speech was slurred” and that he smelled “a moderate odor of an alcoholic beverage” on her breath.
Mariorenzi failed the three field sobriety tests that Cooke asked her to perform, according to the officer’s report, and took her into custody.
At about 8 p.m. at the police station, Ofc. Nicholas Reay conducted two blood-alcohol [BAC] tests on Mariorenzi, and reported readings of .206 and .220, above the Rhode Island BAC legal limit of .08.
Officers also filed a charge of driving with an expired license and a Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal citation for a laned roadway violation against Mariorenzi.
Mariorenzi pleaded not guilty at arraignment on March 3 in Third District Court, according to online court records, and is next due for pretrial on March 18.
Author: Joe Hutnak - [email protected]
Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large of Warwick Post. For Warwick Post-related inquiries or communications, email [email protected]
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