A woman was arrested for driving under the influence after one of her children flagged down a trooper for help following a fiery crash in Miami on Sunday, according to an arrest report.
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It was just after 7 p.m. when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a grey Nissan stopped on the eastbound side of Connector Road, west of Interstate 95, with heavy front-end damage and smoking, the report details.
The trooper said they pulled over when they saw a 12-year-old boy with a 2-year-old toddler in his arms “waving his arms to get my attention” while a man tried to help a woman in the driver’s seat who was refusing to get out. The arrest report says the boy had heavy reddening on his face and some scrapes.
Authorities said the driver, identified as 34-year-old Iris Damaris Ruiz, was instructed to get out of the car because a fire had started in the engine bay, which the trooper was able to put out with a fire extinguisher.
Then, when checking for injuries, the trooper said they smelled alcohol on Ruiz’s breath while she slurred her words and displayed “bloodshot, watery eyes.”
The arrest report states that Ruiz agreed to field sobriety tests, and allegedly kept “swaying back and forth while standing with her hands down by her side and feet together.” The trooper said that during the gaze test, she had to be “reminded to follow the stimulus with her eyes only and not to turn her head.” She also reportedly confused her left and right foot multiple times when asked to walk a tape line, and started the exercise “by counting at 1000-2 and without lifting up her right foot.”
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Ruiz was arrested and taken to an FHP station, where she provided a breath sample that recorded a blood alcohol level of .216%, officials said. The legal limit is .08%.
She was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on charges of DUI, two counts of child abuse without great bodily harm, DUI with property damage and DUI with injuries.
In a bond court hearing on Monday, Judge Mindy Glazer said she found probable cause for child neglect. She would not allow Ruiz to have supervised visitation with her children, who are in the custody of their grandmother.
“Absolutely not. Let her get clean and let the dependency judge decide if she’s in a state to be a good mom for her children. It’s a shame and unfortunate,” she said. “Her Mother’s Day was spent driving drunk with two children in the car, which she could’ve killed.”
At the end of the hearing, Glazer also told Ruiz: “So you need to comply with whatever dependency court says if you want to see your children. Number one, stop drinking alcohol. Otherwise, you’re going to have to choose: is it going to be the booze or your kids? That’s what the dependency judge is going to tell you. You’ll do fine. You’ll get through this. Just try and get some counseling.”
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