Beaufort woman facing New Year’s Eve DUI has been arrested 5 times for suspended license
Before 8 a.m. on New Year’s Eve Latreece Davis, 36, of Beaufort told police that she’d missed her driveway after turning left onto Bay Pines Road.
She went to make a U-turn in the parking lot of an RV repair shop in Beaufort.
“She drove right into the building,” the repair shop’s manager said. “Right through it.”
The car left a 10-by-5-foot hole in the building that the business had to board up so customers wouldn’t mistake it for an entrance.
A deputy with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office caught up with Davis when she walked away from the crash, according to a report.
Davis told the deputy she took three shots of vodka prior to driving. She did not pass field sobriety tests administered by police.
The Sheriff’s Office charged Davis with one count of driving under the influence, one count of leaving the scene of a crash, one count of having an uninsured car, and one count of driving on a suspended license.
Prior to this incident, Davis had been arrested five times since 2012 on charges of driving on a suspended license, according to court records and a SLED background check.
In each case, a judge gave Davis a fine for the charge, which is a misdemeanor in South Carolina. The SLED document states she was convicted of three of the charges.
Other past driving-related convictions include driving on the wrong side of the road in 2011, along with speeding and child restraint violations in 2012.
Suspension
Her first suspended license charge occurred in 2012, which could’ve resulted from an unpaid traffic ticket.
It’s the reason nearly 200,000 in South Carolina had suspended drivers licenses, according to a 2019 lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
The complaint, still pending, alleges that the system causes has nothing to do with safety and instead causes people to spiral deeper into poverty with more fees and further entangle themselves in the legal system.
On the flip side, Mothers Against Drunk Driving says suspended license charges are a mechanism DUI offenders use to get out of DUI convictions.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 4:45 AM.
