It's been a while since we've heard from the Sunshine State, but authorities there arrested a woman who admitted to drinking three and a half bottles of wine before crashing her BMW on I-75 Friday.
Janet Malizia, 49, had two children in the car with her when she allegedly hit a trailer an sped away. When police pulled her over after the crash, her 11-year-old son — who had caught his mom guzzling wine in a gas station and told her she shouldn't be drinking — handed them a cup of wine from inside the car. She had polished off three of the five bottles she purchased during the pit stop. Hoo-rah.
Sounds crazy, but it happened in Florida, so it wasn't so crazy at all. Just dumb. Sorry, kid. Mom's a wino.
Somehow, Malizia got off with only a couple of misdemeanors, that despite the fact that the mob of outraged parents assembling in my mind would say she ought to go to prison. But she admitted to police that it was wrong to be drinking with her children in the car, so authorities called their father to come pick up the kids and charged mom with two DUI charges and a misdemenor leaving-the-scene-of-a-crash count.
There's no word yet on how much damage she did to the trailer or her BMW, or if a PTA meeting is being organized to initiate Malizia's ostracization from the good parents' club.
Photo credit: Columbia County Sheriff's Office