As hard as it may be to believe, being arrested for Operating While Intoxicated 8 different times isn't even close to the record.

65-year-old Dennis Draves of Clinton, Wisconsin is arrested for his 8th operating while intoxicated charge. Deputies from the Rock County Sheriff’s Office say they were dispatched to the area of North I-43 and East Hart Road for a welfare check on two people just after 2 a.m. on Saturday.

There the deputies found Draves and his 38-year-old girlfriend Virginia Hall. After investigation, police say that Draves had ridden his motorcycle from Janesville to the location where they were found.

Draves showed signs of impairment and was asked to perform sobriety tests. The tests resulted in Dennis Draves being arrested for felony 8th offense OWI, operating after suspension and expired registration.

For many people, the thought of even one arrest on this charge is more than enough--but 8 times? How is someone with this kind of record still behind the wheel (or, in this case, handlebars) in any way for any reason?

If you, like me, thought that 8 arrests for OWI might be close to some sort of record--we're both quite wrong.

Here are a few examples of people who never learned to say the word "when:"

  • South Dakota may have been home to a potential record holder. Appropriately nicknamed, “Mr. DUI,” Jerry Zeller is rumored to have racked up an astonishing 30+ DUI arrests. Officials are unsure of the actual amount. It seems that the only thing that was able to keep Mr. DUI from driving drunk again was his death in 2008. Zeller fell asleep with a lit cigarette which caused the house fire that eventually killed him. Rumor has it that alcohol played a part in the incident.
  • In May of 2012, an Albuquerque man was arrested for the 20th time. George Toledo, 62, allegedly had two flasks in his possession when he was arrested, one of which was empty. A witness stated that when officers pulled Toledo from his car, he urinated on himself.
  • In August of 2009, a New Mexico police dashboard camera captured the DUI arrest of Delano T. Vigil. The video showed no apparent sign of intoxication as Vigil was coherent and walking. However, it was later determined that Vigil’s blood alcohol content was an almost five times the legal limit at 0.392 percent, enough to kill some people. Even more surprising was that the arrest marked Vigil’s 22nd DUI.
  • A Virginia man was given seven years in prison for his 25th DUI arrest in May of 2012. Tracy Michael Decker was arrested after arguing with an employee at a toll station. If that wasn’t bad enough, Decker’s BAC was 0.28 percent, he had open alcohol containers in his vehicle, and had two 4 year old children without seatbelts in the back seat.

However, in 2003, NBC-5 in Chicago filed this report:

ANDERSON, Ind. -- A 74-year-old Anderson man who's been arrested at least 400 times for drunken driving was sentenced Monday to 17 years in prison for his latest drunken driving conviction. Virldeen Redmon was arrested in July for driving even though his license had been suspended for life. His latest conviction was on charges of driving while intoxicated, endangering a person and driving while suspended.

Police have been arresting Redmon since 1947, including three times since June. He's had his driver's license suspended for life five times. In 1996, a judge sentenced Redmon to 9-1/2 years in prison. That sentence was reduced in 2001 and he was released after a doctor testified that Redmon suffers from health problems.

 

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