A Utah school bus driver was arrested on suspicion of DUI Friday after authorities determined his blood alcohol content was at least three times the legal limit as he drove half a dozen children.
Sevier County Sheriff’s Office deputies first received an anonymous complaint Friday that the Sevier School District bus driver had been drinking and was on his way to pick up students, according to a probable cause statement.
A responding deputy found the man’s bus in Monroe, parked at South Sevier Middle School as students were boarding. (Monroe is about 175 miles south of Salt Lake City.) The deputy wrote that when he boarded the bus, there were more than a dozen students on board, and he could smell “a strong odor of alcohol” coming from the 57-year-old driver, the document states.
The deputy stepped off the bus and found a supervisor, who “arranged for the students to be moved to another bus,” according to the document. The deputy then questioned the driver, who said the last time he had anything to drink was the previous night, then refused to say if he had been drinking that day.
The driver was “a little unsteady on his feet,” according to the deputy, and his eyes were bloodshot. He failed a field sobriety test, and a breath test showed “positive for alcohol.” After he was taken to the Sevier County jail, another breath test showed the driver’s blood alcohol content was 0.15. The legal limit in Utah is 0.05.
According to the arresting deputy, it seemed at least six of the students on the man’s bus had been driven to the middle school where he was stopped from a local elementary school. The probable cause statement does not specify which elementary school, but the only one in Monroe is about 3½ blocks away. None of the students was injured.
The Sevier School District released a statement that it was “made aware of a bus/transportation concern on Friday” and “immediately responded by halting the bus route and notifying the appropriate authorities.”
Parents of the students who were on the bus were also “notified immediately” that their children would be coming home on a different bus and that a new driver had been assigned, the school district said.
The driver was booked into Sevier County jail on suspicion of six counts of DUI with a passenger under the age of 16. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not name defendants unless they have been formally charged with a crime.
