A Manatee County, Florida, deputy found a driver and her passenger asleep inside a car that was stopped in the left lane of U.S. 301, and the driver was arrested on a DUI charge. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office released body camera footage of the encounter on its Facebook page. Timestamps in the video put the stop at roughly 12:49 a.m. on June 27, 2026.
The deputy walked up to the car and couldn’t rouse either occupant right away. He got on the radio and asked for a second unit and EMS. He told dispatch he had two people who were unconscious and that he wasn’t sure of their breathing status.
The driver eventually woke up, and the deputy told her to wake her friend. She told him the other woman planned to stay the night with her and wasn’t going to drive home. The deputy asked whether they thought they were safe to drive that night, and the driver told him they were. He responded that they were parked in the middle of 301 and that it was dangerous.
The car had its hazard lights activated, and the video shows a brief conversation with an individual who stopped because they thought the vehicle might be stranded. The deputy had the woman exit the vehicle so he could conduct field sobriety tests to determine whether she could operate a vehicle safely. He then arrested her for DUI, stating that he did not think she was safe to drive. The sheriff’s office has not released her name, and it hasn’t said whether the passenger faced any charges.
Why Florida Drivers Can Be Arrested for DUI Without Actually Driving
Under Florida Statute 316.193, a person commits DUI by driving or by being in actual physical control of a vehicle while impaired or at a blood alcohol level of .08 or higher. The statute doesn’t define actual physical control, so Florida courts have built the standard case by case. The state’s standard jury instruction sets out two elements: the person has to be physically in or on the vehicle, and the person has to be capable of operating it.
So, an arrest doesn’t require an officer to see the car move. Officers and prosecutors weigh where the person was sitting, whether the engine was running, where the keys were, and where the vehicle came to a stop. A first DUI conviction in Florida carries a fine of $500 to $1,000, up to six months in jail and a driver’s license suspension of 180 days to a year.
Has Manatee County Seen Cases Like This Before?
The county had a similar case three months earlier. WWSB reported that Florida Highway Patrol troopers found Kimberly Brown, 37, asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla stopped in a travel lane of Interstate 75 around 2 a.m. on April 24. Troopers said the car’s Autopilot feature was engaged and that Brown’s blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit. She was booked into the Manatee County Jail on a DUI charge.
The sheriff’s office also runs periodic DUI saturation patrols through its traffic unit. Deputies ran one on Friday, July 3, and arrested six drivers on DUI charges and six more people on misdemeanor traffic charges, according to WWSB. They issued 52 civil traffic citations and 36 warnings during the same operation.
No arrest report from the June 27 stop has been made public, so the driver’s name, her blood alcohol level, and the specific charge she faces are all still unknown.