Kristiana Simon, 30, faces several charges after a crash involving her car and another vehicle at the Poplar Level Road exit from the Watterson Expressway. Her breath-test result was .139, and the driver of the other car was hospitalized with serious injuries, according to the report.
According to WHAS11, investigators said Simon was traveling east on Watterson at a high rate of speed when her car left the exit ramp. It crossed the southbound lanes and raised median before hitting another vehicle; the impact carried that car across the northbound lanes.
The driver of the struck vehicle was taken to UofL Hospital. Police described the injuries as serious, though authorities expected that driver to survive, the station's report says.
Signs of Impairment and a Pair of Empty Bottles
The arrest citation says responding officers noted glassy eyes, a heavy gaze, slowed responses and a strong odor of alcohol. It also records that Simon failed several field sobriety tests and was judged greatly impaired.
A probable-cause search found two open, empty alcoholic beverage containers in Simon's car—a whiskey bottle and a tequila bottle, according to the same account. The citation says she was arrested after the crash.
Charges Stack Up Beyond the DUI Count
Simon faces charges that include operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, first-degree wanton endangerment and first-degree criminal mischief, the report notes. She was also cited for possessing an open alcohol container in a motor vehicle, along with insurance-related offenses: failure to maintain required insurance and failure to produce an insurance card.
Kentucky law defines the alcohol threshold at the center of the DUI charge: under Kentucky Revised Statute 189A.010, it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or above — a mark Simon's result nearly doubled. Jefferson District Court cases like hers typically move through the Jefferson County Attorney's DUI Division, which handles the county's drunk-driving prosecutions and notes that some cases may be eligible for diversion.
Simon was transported to Louisville Metro Department of Corrections following her arrest and was released from custody on Monday, per the same account.
A Stretch of Road With a Troubled Recent History
This crash adds to a string of serious wrecks along Poplar Level Road. WHAS11 separately reported that two men were killed and another was critically injured in a crash on the road in September 2026 following a reported reckless-driver complaint involving a pickup truck. And WDRB reported that a person died ten days after a three-car crash on the same road in August 2025. It's not established whether alcohol or drugs played a role in either of those earlier crashes.
Another reported fatal crash
A separate fatal collision was reported by WLKY: around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 27, in the 4500 block of Poplar Level Road, a driver died when a northbound vehicle turning out of a business parking lot was struck by a southbound SUV. The reported circumstances differ from this crash, which began at the Watterson Expressway exit.
Louisville Metro's own High Injury Network data for Jefferson County, built from 2018-2022 crash records, is one of the tools the city uses to track dangerous corridors, while statewide crash figures are compiled through the Collision Reporting Analysis for Safer Highways system used by Kentucky State Police, according to the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety.
