A Florida woman is facing several charges after deputies say she drove drunk through a Flagler County town. Along the way, she crashed into several pieces of property and nearly hit another driver head-on. Her blood alcohol level was reportedly more than twice the legal limit while making her way through. When deputies asked about the heavy damage to the front of her car and its missing bumper, she told them “it was already like that.”
It started around 2:30 a.m. Saturday in Bunnell, when Flagler County deputies got a call about a reckless driver, Fox 35 Orlando reported. The person who called said they’d nearly been hit head-on. Deputies tracked down the car, which they say had swerved off the road and struck several pieces of property along the way. When they stopped it, they identified the driver as 23-year-old Perla Chacon.
On bodycam footage released by the sheriff’s office, Chacon was asked to explain her car’s condition. She insisted she hadn’t hit anything and that the damage was already there. She also claimed she hadn’t had much to drink in two weeks, even as deputies reported that she was slurring her words and smelled of alcohol.
Chacon was arrested and charged with one count of DUI, three counts of DUI with property damage, and three counts of leaving the scene of a crash. The sheriff, Rick Staly, pointed out that things could have been far worse. He noted that she was lucky to have only hit a fence and a mailbox and that no one was hurt. He used the arrest to remind people to line up a designated driver or call for a ride if they happen to be impaired. Later, Chacon was released on a $4,450 bond.
What Does Twice the Limit Mean?
In Florida, a driver is considered legally impaired at a blood alcohol level of 0.08 percent. Deputies say Chacon was at more than double that. At that level, coordination, reaction time, and judgment are all badly affected, which lines up with a car that reportedly drifted off the road and into several objects. It’s also why she allegedly couldn’t keep her story straight at the scene.
The scarier part isn’t the property she hit. It’s the head-on near-miss that started the whole thing, when another driver had to swerve to avoid her. At highway speeds, a wrong-lane drift at that level of impairment is how deadly crashes happen. The fence and the mailbox absorbed the damage this time, but it could have been a person.
Why So Many Charges?
The long list of counts isn’t a mistake. In Florida, hitting property while driving under the influence can be charged separately for each thing you damage, so multiple objects can mean multiple counts. Leaving the scene of each of those crashes adds another set of charges on top. That’s how a single drunk drive turns into seven counts in one night.
The sheriff’s takeaway was blunt and familiar. Driving drunk is dangerous and irresponsible, and the cheap, easy alternative is a designated driver or a ride home. Chacon walked away from this one with a few thousand dollars in bond and a stack of charges, rather than
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