A 30-year-old Milwaukee woman named Tequila Williams is facing drunk driving and reckless endangerment charges after Milwaukee County sheriff's deputies say they found her driving the wrong way on I-41/US-45 near Good Hope Road with an open bottle of Don Julio tequila in the glove box. Deputies were dispatched to the scene on Saturday, Oct. 17, after a report of a wrong-way driver heading southbound in the northbound lanes.
According to FOX6 News Milwaukee, a responding deputy spotted the vehicle being driven in the center median breakdown lane and had to maneuver around it to avoid a collision because the car wasn't completely clear of traffic. When deputies caught up with Williams, she told them she had merged onto the wrong side of the freeway and was trying to find a lane to get off.
Williams reportedly told deputies she had been drinking “a little bit” and said her last drink was an hour before the stop. She performed walk-and-turn and one-leg-stand sobriety tests, both of which showed signs of impairment, the station's report states.
Refusal Led Deputies to Seek a Warrant
Williams refused both a preliminary breathalyzer test and a later evidentiary chemical test, prompting deputies to obtain a search warrant for a blood draw. Her blood was drawn at a local hospital, and as of Thursday those results were still pending, per the same account.
Before the vehicle was towed, deputies searched it and found an open bottle of Don Julio tequila sitting in the glove box, the report notes. Williams now faces operating while under the influence as a second offense, along with second-degree recklessly endangering safety. Her initial court appearance was scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22.
Not an Isolated Problem on Milwaukee Freeways
Wrong-way crashes have become a recurring hazard on Milwaukee County freeways. In one earlier incident reported by FOX6 News Milwaukee, a driver traveled roughly two miles the wrong way in the northbound lanes of the same I-41/US-45 corridor, with freeway cameras capturing the car passing through a construction zone near Appleton Avenue before the vehicle ended up on the shoulder; that crash caused only minor damage and no injuries.
In a separate case detailed by TMJ4, a deputy used his squad car and his K-9 partner, Creed, to stop a 39-year-old woman who had passed 22 vehicles while driving the wrong way and plowed through a construction zone before being taken into custody on suspicion of OWI with a blood-alcohol level nearly five times the legal limit. Nobody was hurt in that encounter, and separate DOT video has shown a driver going the wrong way on I-94 in Waukesha County before eventually self-correcting back into the proper lanes.
State transportation officials have been working to address the issue. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has said it plans to install additional oversized wrong-way and do-not-enter signs along with reflective strips at freeway entrance ramps, and has identified 10 additional locations for wrong-way-driver alert systems on roads prone to the problem.
What Wisconsin Law Says
Under Wisconsin law, refusing a chemical test does not shield a driver from evidence of intoxication — state statutes note that chemical test results, even those drawn for diagnostic purposes, can be admitted in an OWI trial without the patient's approval. Separately, state law defines first-degree recklessly endangering safety as conduct showing utter disregard for human life, a Class F felony, though Williams's current charge is listed as second-degree recklessly endangering safety rather than first-degree.
