A suburban woman charged with drunken driving allegedly told police she was driving to White Castle to “sober up.”
Katherine Muhlenbruc, 25, of Franklin Park, was pulled over by Riverside police around 4:15 a.m. near Harlem and Ogden Avenues after officers watched her vehicle cross the center lane and the double yellow line while traveling north on Harlem, police said.
When officers pulled the vehicle over, the woman told them she was coming from a bar in Darien and “was doing nothing wrong,” according to authorities.
She then said she was driving to a White Castle in Berwyn to “sober up,” Riverside Police said.
Muhlenbruc allegedly failed six roadside sobriety tests and was arrested. She was taken to the police station in the area where she told an officer she consumed three “Sex on the Beach” drinks at the bar and “wasn’t that drunk,” authorities said.
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel called the drink -- made with vodka, cranberry juice, peach schnapps and orange juice -- “extremely potent.”
While at the station, Muhlenbruc’s blood-alcohol level was a .115, nearly two times the legal limit in Illinois, police said. They allege Muhlenbruc told them at the station she would have sobered up eventually if she hadn’t been stopped by the police.
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Muhlenbruc was charged with two counts of drunk driving, driving with no insurance, improper lane usage and driving in the wrong lane.
“Unbelievably, the defendant in this case was so intoxicated that she actually tried to convince the officer that she was driving to sober up,” Weitzel said in a statement. “That statement in itself is ridiculous and shows the intoxication level of the driver.”
He added, “Numerous avenues are available to those who chose to drink to get home safely such as Uber and Lyft. Driving around to sober up is not one of them.”
It was not immediately clear if Muhlenbruc had an attorney.
