Newly released bodycam footage shows the failed sobriety test and arrest of Michigan state representative, Mary Cavanaugh after she was pulled over for driving on two flat tires.
Police pulled 30-year-old Cavanaugh over when they saw her driving with the flat tires and swerving between lanes on the highway in Livonia, a suburb just west of Detroit, at around 2am on February 25.
In bodycam footage of the arrest, Cavanaugh – who has a drink driving conviction dating back to 2015 – tells officers that she was driving back from a political fundraiser, that she’d had two glasses of red wine, and that she did not know how the tires had been damaged.
The officer on site then demonstrates and conducts a sobriety test involving walking in a straight line and standing on one leg.
Cavanagh was elected to state office for Redford Township in 2020, and in 2021 she co-sponsored and passed legislation to expunge first time drunk-driving offenses.
The law came into effect on February 19, six days before her second DUI arrest.
In the bodycam footage of the February arrest, Cavanaugh follows the test directions incorrectly, is unable to stand on one leg, and changes the number of drinks she had from two to one and back again.
Watch:
At that point the officers place her in their squad car to conduct a breathalyzer, where she blows a .176% blood alcohol content and is placed under arrest.
Later at the Livonia police station, she tested at .2% BAC, more than twice the legal driving limit of .08%.
If convicted this will be Cavanaugh’s second DUI, following a 2015 misdemeanor for operating under the influence which she served a year of probation for.
Rep. Cavanaugh’s grandfather, Jerome Cavanagh, was mayor of Detroit from 1962 to 1970, her father, Phil Cavanaugh, served in the Michigan House of Representatives, and her mother, Lily Cavanaugh, is the treasurer of Redford Township.
In a statement posted to Instagram on Thursday, Rep. Cavanaugh apologized and alluded that she faces alcohol addiction.
‘What I can offer you is the very real truth that addiction is a hard road to travel,’ she wrote, ‘It is a road that may get easier with education, counseling and treatment, all of those which I am fully engaged, but it is a road that requires discipline and determination and, most of all, my faith.’
Cavanaugh has a pretrial appearance scheduled for April 21.
This is an excerpt from Daily Mail.
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