WESTWOOD — As 2025 comes to a close, AAA Northeast urges those who plan to take part in year-end holiday celebrations to designate a sober driver.
In December 2023, 1,038 people were killed in drunk-driving crashes nationwide — with more than a quarter of those fatalities occurring during the Christmas and New Year holiday periods according to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Nighttime driving is significantly more dangerous than daytime driving: 30% of drivers involved in fatal crashes between 6 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. were drunk.
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Lt. Erik Martin was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of both the criminal and internal investigations, Hialeah Police Department Lt. Eddie Rodriguez said.
Miami Herald File
A Hialeah police lieutenant was arrested Tuesday morning, accused of driving under the influence while off-duty, authorities said.
Lt. Erik Martin was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of both criminal and internal investigations, Hialeah Police Department Lt. Eddie Rodriguez said.
Martin, who has been an officer with the agency since 2006, is assigned to the Uniform Patrol Division, Rodriguez said.
He was arrested by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, which is outside of Hialeah’s jurisdiction, according to police.
Hialeah police Chief George Fuente called the allegations surrounding Martin’s arrest “deeply disappointing.”
“Such incidents tarnish the badge and distracts from the tireless work of the men and women who serve this community with integrity every day,” Fuente said in a statement. “We do not condone this behavior; however, we recognize that our officers are human.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.: A senior State Department official said this week that President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked roughly 80,000 non-immigrant visas since taking office on January 20, citing offenses such as driving under the influence, assault, and theft.
The Washington Examiner first reported the scale of these revocations, which illustrate a wide-ranging immigration crackdown undertaken after Trump assumed the presidency, resulting in the deportation of unprecedented numbers of migrants, including individuals who held valid visas.
The administration has also implemented more demanding standards for visa issuance, introducing stricter social media vetting and expanding its screening measures. Of the visas revoked, approximately 16,000 were linked to DUI cases, around 12,000 to assault, and another 8,000 to theft. “These three offenses accounted for nearly half of the revocations this year,” the senior official said, speaking anonymously.
In August, a State Department spokesperson confirmed that more than 6,000 student visas had been canceled for overstaying or violating U.S. laws, with a small portion tied to allegations of “support for terrorism.” The department also said last month that at least six visas were withdrawn due to social media posts referencing the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in May that he has revoked the visas of hundreds — possibly thousands — of individuals, including students, for involvement in activities he described as conflicting with U.S. foreign policy priorities.
Recent State Department guidance instructed U.S. diplomats overseas to maintain heightened scrutiny of applicants who may be considered hostile to the United States or have a record of political activism.
Officials in the Trump administration have asserted that holders of student visas and green cards could face deportation for expressing support for Palestinians or for criticizing Israel’s actions in the Gaza conflict, arguing that such positions threaten U.S. foreign policy and amount to pro-Hamas sentiment.
Former Seattle Seahawk Richard Sherman will not go on trial for driving under the influence.
A King County Court ordered a deferred prosecution in the case Tuesday.
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said Sherman did not receive preferential treatment—under state law, a defendant has the right to request a deferred prosecution once.
A defendant must agree to two years of treatment and be placed on a 5-year probationary period.
Richard Sherman charged with DUI after February traffic stop
Sherman was charged with DUI after a traffic stop in Bellevue in February of last year.
The charge took more than a year after the arrest because prosecutors were waiting for blood-alcohol test reports to be completed. In June, he pleaded not guilty.
Troopers said Sherman was driving 79 mph in a 60 mph zone. They reported Sherman was swerving, and once they pulled him over, they said his eyes were bloodshot, his speech was slurred, and they could smell alcohol.
Sherman was also arrested for allegedly driving under the influence in 2021 following a domestic disturbance.
Tiffany Pierce, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated vehicular homicide and two counts of OVI, according to Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas records filed on Friday.
Pierce, Tiffany Danielle (03/24/1990) – Held in custody of Montgomery County Jail with booking number 24-014573 on 11/11/2024 at 1:17 PM. Second Degree Felony – Agg Vehicular Homicide (Pending);
She could face up to 12 years in prison for the aggravated vehicular homicide charge and six months in jail for each OVI charge.
Court records indicate that Pierce’s driver’s license will be permanently revoked.
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As previously reported by News Center 7, the crash occurred in the 7400 block of State Route 4 around 8 p.m. on Aug. 25, 2024.
62-year-old Sheryl Matthews was killed in the crash.
A crash report indicates that Pierce was driving a 2014 Mercedes CLA 250 northbound on SR-4 went off the right side of the road and overcorrected.
Pierce crossed the center line into the opposite lane and hit a 2012 Brown Cadillac SRX, which was driven by Matthews.
Both cars went off the side of the road.
Pierce remains booked in the Montgomery County jail. Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 29, according to court records.
An 8-year-old girl named Maryah was killed in a car crash over the weekend in Southwest Atlanta, and the driver accused of causing the crash was already facing charges for similar crimes.
Jose Alejandro Cuahuizo-Varela, the driver accused of driving under the influence and hit and run, had previously been indicted on state charges for DUI and hit and run two years ago. He was out on bond when the crash occurred on Saturday night, resulting in the death of Maryah.
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“They took a star away from us,” said Latazamisha Nunn, Maryah’s mother, expressing her grief and shock at the loss of her daughter.
Cuahuizo-Varela was charged with DUI and hit and run after a crash along Buford Highway in Brookhaven two years ago, although no one was injured in that incident. He was arrested again this year when he was indicted.
Newly released body camera video shows the moment of impact when a person suspected of driving under the influence of drugs drove the wrong way on 2nd Avenue, slamming head-on into a Puyallup Police Officer.
“I’m trapped, car’s on fire,” the officer says to his radio after the airbag deploys.
The driver was spotted by an officer already arresting someone suspected of DUI just as the Washington State Fair ended Friday evening, according to Puyallup police.
Those were the first of 30 suspected DUI drivers over the Labor Day weekend.
“It’s tragic that our officer got hit. Thank God he’s okay, but I think about if our officer didn’t get in the way and stop that vehicle, that could have been a citizen or a family just driving home,” said Captain Jeremy Hendrick, with Puyallup police.
In King County, Washington State Patrol arrested 25 DUI suspects, King County Sheriff’s Office caught 13 more, and other municipalities had their own DUI arrests.
“Any DUI arrest, any DUI collisions are 100% preventable,” Trooper Rick Johnson with the State Patrol said. “Especially these days…there are so many ways to get from Point A to Point B if you choose to consume something that will impair you.”
Washington State Patrol and Puyallup police were some of several law enforcement agencies to bring extra personnel and cruisers for DUI enforcement over the long holiday weekend.
WSP troopers take arrest and crash data to decide where to target enforcement.
“It’s geomapping areas to emphasize those areas which historically have been a problem in order to prevent anything bad from happening and removing bad drivers,” Johnson said.
The Washington Traffic Safety Commission (WTSC) reported more crashes taking place since the pandemic. In 2019, 267 people were killed in DUI crashes compared to 344 people who were killed in those kinds of crashes in 2024.
The WTSC reported half of all fatal crashes involve a person suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
“Impaired driving is the number one risk factor we see in fatal crashes,” Mark McKechnie, the external relations director for WTSC.
In response to rising crashes, the Washington state lawmakers requested the WTSC to find ways to curb DUIs in the state. The Commission proposes:
Re-establishing DUI checkpoints
Lower the blood-alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05
Use road-side body fluid tests to test for drugs that aren’t alcohol
Crack down on people not using interlock devices who should be
After the Washington Supreme Court rulings, DUI checkpoints were deemed illegal in the state.
The WTSC estimates, based on data from other states and countries that have them, 12 deaths and 418 injuries by impaired drivers were prevented by DUI checkpoints. p The $6 million investment would prevent more than $30 million in damages for victims, the study estimates.
“The impact is a combination of prevention and intervention because part of what you do when you run a checkpoint is you publicize them. You want people to know that there’s a checkpoint so, it provides a deterrence to prevent people from driving impaired in the first place.” McKechnie said.
McKechnie points to the report showing that lowering the blood alcohol limit would have double the preventable effect on lives lost and injuries caused by impaired drivers. He points to several other countries and states that have lower BAC limits than Washington.
“By leaving our ‘limit’ per se at 0.08 percent, it unfortunately seems to be sending the public the wrong message that they’re okay to drive until they’re at 0.08 percent or above and that’s simply not true,” McKechnie said.
PEABODY — A Peabody man was arrested on a sixth drunk driving offense earlier this month after crashing a motorcycle into a stone wall while under the influence.
The incident occurred just before 11 p.m. on Oct. 5 at the corner of Franklin and Kosciusko streets.
George Bradley, 55, was allegedly speeding down Franklin Street on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when he noticed a stop sign too late, tried to break and “left a skid mark for approximately 50 feet before disregarding the stop sign and crashing into the stone wall of 5 Kosciusko St.,” according to a police report.
Bradley was evaluated at the scene for injuries, but refused to be taken to the hospital, police said. While the motorcycle was dented in the crash, the wall was undamaged.
Police said Bradley failed field sobriety tests at the scene and was arrested.
In addition to a sixth drunk driving offense, he was charged with operating an unregistered and uninsured vehicle, negligently operating a vehicle and driving with a suspended license.
Police said the motorcycle was owned by someone other than Bradley.
The Essex County District Attorney’s office confirmed that Bradley did have his driver’s license revoked for life upon his fifth OUI offense, per state law.
He is being held without bail following a dangerousness hearing.
Col. John E. Mawn Jr., superintendent of Massachusetts State Police, said a “sobriety checkpoint” will be implemented on a public way in Essex County this weekend.
The purpose is to further educate drivers and strengthen the public’s awareness of the need for detecting and removing those motorists who operate under the influence of alcohol and, or, drugs from the roadways.
It will be operated during varied hours Saturday into Sunday. The selection of vehicles will not be arbitrary, safety will be assured, and any inconveniences to motorists will be minimized with advance notice to reduce fear and anxiety, Mawn said in a release.
The checkpoint is made possible through a grant provided by the Office of Grants and Research of the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
Things aren’t looking so Sunny for Tammy Sytch. Nearly two years after the former WWE superstar was arrested and charged with DUI causing death, she’s finally got her sentence.
Back in April 2022, the 50-year-old was accused of killing 75-year-old Julian Lafrancis Lasseter. While driving drunk, she slammed her Mercedes into the rear of his Kia Sorento that was stopped at a stoplight in Florida. The force pushed the car forward, causing it to slam into the back of the car ahead of it — and the sever collision from both ends caused fatal injuries to the elderly man. So, so sad.
Tammy and the passengers in the other car weren’t seriously injured, but she was found to be over the legal limit when she slammed into the Kia at a “high rate speed” as reported by police at the time. Because of her intoxication, she’s now facing almost two decades behind bars.
On Monday, the former WWE Diva addressed the courtroom in an emotional testimony. She wore an orange jumpsuit and her hands were in cuffs as she tearfully addressed Julian’s family, saying:
“I know my words are not enough. But please know I think about you every day. Every second of every day, and I will do whatever I can to make the changes I need to make sure this never happens again. No one should have to go through this and please know that every single second of every day since the crash, I wish I could change places with him.”
After hours of argument back in forth in court, though, the judge ultimately decided on a sentence: 17 years in prison!
That’s a long time, but it’s much lighter than the 26-year sentence prosecutors were pushing for. They argued she was still a “danger to society”. This was someone who had previously been arrested for making terroristic threats after all. But the judge didn’t throw the entire book at her, opting for about two thirds of what they asked. However, she’ll have to serve an additional 8 years probation after.
Tammy didn’t show much of a reaction when she received her sentencing, leaving everyone to wonder what she was really thinking. You can see the video of her entire sentencing (below):
This wasn’t the first time the former wrestler — who went by the name Sunny in the ring — got caught up with some drunk driving charges, either. According to her criminal record, she’s been arrested at least six other times due to her impairment behind the wheel. So, a danger to society might not be that far off. It’s a stroke of pure luck no one else was seriously injured or killed during all her drunk driving before this one!
What do U think of Tammy’s sentencing, Perezcious readers? Did she get let off too easy — or was this a sufficient sentencing? Sound OFF (below).
LINCOLN, Neb. — An investigation into a crash that killed six people in southeastern Nebraska last month shows the driver of the car was drunk, police said in a news release.
Lincoln police said Monday that the results from a toxicology report show 26-year-old Jonathan Kurth, of Lincoln, had at the time of the crash a blood alcohol content of .211 — more than 2½ times the legal driving limit of .08.
Police also said that electronic data collected from the car showed it was traveling 100 mph (161 kph) in the moments before it crashed into a tree along a residential street where the speed limit is 25 mph (40 kph).
Police were first alerted to the early morning Oct. 2 crash when one passenger’s cellphone automatically alerted dispatchers that the phone’s owner had been in a crash and was not responding.
Kurth and four male passengers died at the scene: Octavias Farr, 21; Jonathan Koch, 22; Nicholas Bisesi, 22; and Benjamin Lenagh, 23. A fifth passenger, Cassie Brenner, 24, died later at a hospital.
All of the dead were residents of Lincoln except Lenagh, who was from Omaha.
CENTREVILLE, Va. — A bus driver for an elementary school in the nation’s capital has been charged with driving while intoxicated after his bus veered into a ditch while returning from a field trip to a farm in northern Virginia.
Nine children were treated at the scene for minor injuries, Fairfax County Police said.
The bus was carrying 44 children and four adults back Thursday to Murch Elementary School in Washington, D.C., after a field trip to Cox Farms in Centreville, Virginia — a popular field trip destination in the region.
Police said the bus hit a rock and veered into a ditch off a road in the northern Virginia county.
The 48-year-old driver from Suitland, Maryland, was charged after police say he failed a field sobriety test and had a blood-alcohol content of .20, more than double the legal limit of .08.
Police say the driver’s license had already been revoked in Virginia from a prior drunken driving conviction.
Officers also said they found a combined 18 safety violations on the two buses carrying children to the field trip and that none of the operators were properly licensed to operate a school bus.
D.C. Public Schools said in a statement that it plans to undertake a review of the transportation vendors it uses for field trips and other extracurricular activities.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A young man who killed a family in a high-speed crash after ingesting household dust cleaner has been convicted of vehicular homicide.
Jurors found Paul Streater, now 25, guilty of four counts of vehicular homicide in the 2018 crash, which killed a family visiting Florida from Mexico and Argentina.
Prosecutors said Streater, who was in rehabilitation for drug abuse at the time, was on a “euphoric” high from huffing a can of household dust cleaner and traveling at speeds reaching 100 mph (161 kph) when he crashed into the family’s minivan in Delray Beach.
Assistant State Attorney Storm Tropea said Streater faces up to 40 years in prison in the deaths of Jorge Raschiotto, 50, his sister Veronica Raschiotto, 42, and her two children, Diego, 8, and Mia, 6. Jorge Raschiotto specialized in adult education as a professor at Argentina’s National University of Lomas de Zamora. He and Veronica, from Mexico, were visiting their sister Silvina in Florida.
The jury acquitted Streater on felony counts of DUI manslaughter and driving under the influence, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Defense attorney Samuel Halpern told jurors that the chemical found in Streater’s bloodstream was inadvertently ingested due to the car having been cleaned and detailed that day. He also argued that a “catastrophic” malfunction caused Streater’s vehicle to accelerate and left him unable to stop.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen revoked Streater’s bond and will sentence him on Dec. 20. His attorney said they will appeal.
OXFORD, Miss. — A pickup truck struck two University of Mississippi students in a parking lot in downtown Oxford, killing one of them and injuring the other, police said.
Two suspects, both from Collierville, Tennessee, were arrested by Monday in the crash, which occurred early Sunday, authorities said.
Tristan Holland, 18, was taken into custody Sunday in Shelby County, Tennessee, on accessory after the fact. He will face extradition to Oxford, according to the Oxford Police Department.
Seth Rokitka, 24, was taken into custody Monday after investigators found his wrecked truck in Marshall County, Mississippi, between Oxford and Collierville.
The Oxford Police Department said Rokitka was charged with one count of manslaughter and one count of aggravated DUI. He is also charged with violating the duties of a driver involved in an accident that results in death or injury. He appeared before a justice court judge who set a $1 million bond.
The Associated Press left a phone message Monday for Rokitka’s attorney.
It was not immediately clear whether Holland had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.
Oxford police said the department received an emergency call after 1 a.m. Sunday from passersby who saw two people injured in the parking lot behind City Hall. The lot is just off the town square, near several bars and restaurants.
Oxford was busy Saturday because of the home football game between Ole Miss and Auburn.
Mayor Robyn Tannehill said the student who died was 21-year-old Walker Fielder of Madison, Mississippi. Fielder was a 2020 graduate of Jackson Academy in Jackson, Mississippi.
The injured student was transferred to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Oxford police told WRAL-TV that she is 20-year-old Blanche Williamson of Raleigh, North Carolina. Williamson graduated from Episcopal High School, a boarding school in Virginia.
“Oxford is a community that comforts those that need comforting,” Tannehill wrote Sunday on Facebook. “Perhaps that comes from practice and from times of trials that we wish we could pray away, but nevertheless, Oxford always steps up when things are hard and when people need us. These two families need us. They need our prayers.”
Oxford police said Monday that Rokitka and Holland had no interactions with either victim before striking them with the truck, and there were no fights or altercations. Police also said Rokitka and Holland did not provide aid or call 911.
University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce said in an email to faculty, staff and students that the two suspects are not affiliated with the university.
“It is a painful and distressing development for our campus community, and it is understandable that emotions are high with many unanswered questions about what happened,” Boyce wrote.
