A Kentucky mayor was arrested for driving under the influence after she fell asleep in a White Castle restaurant drive-thru line and then lost control and crashed her car in a nearby parking lot, police said. Police officers found Beverly Chester-Burton, mayor of the Louisville suburb of Shively, banged up a Cadillac in the fast food parking lot around 11 pm on Tuesday.
She was trying to leave the parking lot but was so much drunk that she could not control the wheels of the car, authorities said. Cops reported Chester-Burton reeked of alcohol and also failed a sobriety test when she couldn't walk in a straight line.
Setting Wrong Example
Chester-Burton was at the wheels and under the influence of alcohol when she was waiting in the line at the drive through of the fast food chain. The wait wasn't long but she fell asleep. Witnesses said they knocked on Chester-Burton's car window to try to wake her up but that didn't help, according to police.
However, a few moments later she woke up and started driving the car but crashed into a pole in the parking lot. Luckily there were not too many people and the impact wasn't much, which saved her from getting injured. When police reached the 59-year-old, the mayor told officers that "her accelerator got stuck inside the White Castle parking lot" and she exited the parking lot to avoid crashing into other vehicles.
Before crashing into the pole, Chester-Burton struck the rear of a truck, which was pushed into another vehicle, police said. He was then arrested but the drama didn't end there.
Uncooperative from Beginning
Although eyewitnesses said that she fell asleep and they could not wake her up despite several attempts, Chester-Burton initially denied that. According to police, she smelled of alcohol and refused to take a blood test. They said instead, she failed several field tests.
However, after several rounds of questioning, Chester-Burton told officers that she had two martinis with dinner around 5 pm. But after sometime she said she had the drinks at 9 pm, two hours before the incident. She was booked into Louisville Metro Department of Corrections and released Wednesday. Chester-Burton was elected the first Black mayor of Shively, home to about 15,000 people, in 2018.
