A man in North Carolina got the 7th stamp on his DUI loyalty card during a trip to the In-N-Out drive-thru and got a free side order of three years’ prison time with his meal. When staff at the fast food joint noticed something amiss with one of the cars in the queue, they called the police, and it all went downhill for the hungry drunk from there.
Officers approached the car as it sat waiting in the In-N-Out drive-through line and peered through the windows. They spotted a man asleep at the wheel, clearly in no fit state to be driving a car.
According to a police report obtained by the LA Times, the car had a “strong pungent odor of urine, vomit, and an alcoholic beverage.” The situation was quickly evident, and they moved to detain the occupant of the car.
Rather than getting a drive-through burger, Carlos Alvarez, 33, of Salinas, was arrested. He was taken into custody and thrown in the drunk tank to await his charges.
Not His First Rodeo
When the police got Alvarez out of his urine and booze soaked car and ran his details through their system, it transpired that he was quite the well-known drink driver. This was, according to the report, not only his 7th DUI but his 4th in the last decade. He had a real penchant for putting a few down and going for a spin.
This is a serious problem and, obviously, very against the law. The police took him into custody and added yet another DUI to his long rap sheet. He is now sentenced to three years behind bars for his boozy burger run.
It’s anyone’s guess why he was allowed to get behind the wheel after 6 DUIs.
Big Budget For Boozy Busts
The Monterey County District Attorney’s Vertical DUI Prosecution Unit was involved in the arrest of the drunk driver. In January of this year, the unit was given a large grant of $800,000 to focus particularly on drivers under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
In this case, it was thanks to a keen-eyed In-N-Out security that the passed-out hungry driver was spotted. Somehow, he has still managed to make it all the way to the drive-thru before falling asleep, and presumably peeing himself behind the wheel. Hopefully this will be the last time he can put himself and others at risk by driving drunk.