Oklahoma City police body-camera footage shows officers banging on a car window in the middle of the night, trying to wake a driver whose vehicle was still in drive — with a child asleep and unbuckled in the back seat. The driver, identified as Thalia Martinez, was eventually charged with DUI and child endangerment after officers reached inside the car to shift it into park themselves.
Call Came In Around 3:40 A.M.
According to a police report cited by KFOR, officers first received a call about Martinez passed out behind the wheel near the off-ramp at SW 29th Street at around 3:40 a.m. When they arrived, they found her asleep in the driver's seat while the car remained in drive, with a child sleeping in the back seat.
Body-camera video captured the tense moments that followed. Officers banged on the windows repeatedly, only getting Martinez's attention after several attempts, the station's report shows. Audio from the scene captures officers yelling, “Park it! Park it!” as they tried to get her to stop the still-moving vehicle before it could roll further.
Officers Reach Inside to Stop the Car
Once Martinez rolled down her window, officers had to quickly reach inside and shift the car into park themselves, according to the footage. Per the police report, Martinez told officers she had been drinking shots of Bacardi earlier that night. Court documents state that the child in the back seat was unbuckled and asleep throughout the encounter.
Martinez was charged with DUI and child endangerment, the outlet reported. No further details on her arrest date, booking, or court proceedings were included in the available reporting.
Part of a Wider Pattern in Oklahoma
The incident lands amid a troubling statewide trend. Oklahoma's alcohol-impaired traffic deaths rose 25.7% in 2024, climbing from 179 to 225, according to data reported by the Journal Record. That increase came even as drunken-driving deaths nationally fell 4.2% over the same period, from 12,429 to 11,904.
Alcohol was a factor in 34.9% of all Oklahoma road deaths in 2024, compared with roughly 30% nationally, the outlet's analysis found. The state also recorded 8.77 DUI road fatalities per 100,000 licensed drivers — the second-highest rate in the country, behind only South Carolina — despite logging 484.61 DUI arrests per 100,000 drivers, a rate higher than most states. Of the 161 impaired drivers killed on Oklahoma roads that year, 123 were men and 38 were women, per the same data.
Similar cases involving sleeping or impaired drivers with children in the car have surfaced elsewhere in recent months. A Fairmont woman was arrested earlier this month after being found slumped over with a child in the car, according to the Westover Police Department, as reported by WDTV. In August, a driver in Ocoee, Florida, was arrested on suspicion of DUI after officers found her asleep behind the wheel at an intersection, Click Orlando reported, and a Palm Coast woman was arrested after school staff reportedly noticed she appeared impaired while picking up a child, according to Action News Jax.
