Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Bad moms in cars: Using baby to bypass ignition interlock

Episode Date: February 28, 2017

A Pennsylvania mother allegedly used her 8-year-old daughter’s breath to bypass the breathalyzer device installed to prevent her from driving while drunk, but she was busted after crashing her car, according to police. Judges allow many convicted drunk drivers to stay behind the wheel as long as they only drive cars with ignition interlock devices, which tests a driver’s breath before cranking. The woman now faces charges of corrupting her child, along with a new DUI offense. Nancy Grace and Alan Duke discuss this case and the conviction of another woman who put her drugged 5-year-old into a burning car in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Ignition interlock devices, or IIDs, are designed to keep convicted drunk drivers from starting cars if they've been drinking again. In order to start the car, of course, they need to blow into the device to physically show that they are not intoxicated. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. According to Pennsylvania State Police, Waynesboro resident Angela Day-Waltz is charged with a DUI, endangering the welfare of a child and other charges. Day-Walt was in a single-vehicle crash. When state police got to the accident, they found out from a witness that before she got into the car,

she attempted to have her 8-year-old daughter blow into her ignition interlock. Absolutely incredible. A drunk mom uses her little girl's breath to start the car and flee the crash scene. Did mommy use her 8-year-old daughter to bypass the ignition interlock? I mean, really? You have your 8-year-old? That's a good memory. Yeah, I remember when mom had me breathe into the steering wheel so she could drive drunk with me in the car.

Good times. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. I just don't get it. A woman who we think has a history of drunk driving now stands accused of using her little girl's breath to bypass an anti-drunk driving device on her car before she got into another DUI wreck. See, this is the way I see it.

It's not just driving drunk. It's potential murder because I have seen so many vehicular homicides where people drive drunk and they know darn well what they're doing and somebody loses their life. I remember affluenza teen Ethan Couch driving under the influence. and left a fifth permanently paralyzed, a quadriplegic, who is trapped in their own body, can't move, can only see the world because of Ethan Couch driving under the influence. With me, Alan the Duke. Duke, Alan, you don't have this kind of device on your car because you are a good citizen. You don't just have an anti-drunk driving device on your car because you are a good citizen. You don't just have an anti-drunk

driving device on your car. Okay. It doesn't work like that. No, the technology development, adding these to cars has actually allowed people who have drunk driving arrests to still get to work, go to church or wherever they got to go, maybe even to the bar or take their kids to the soccer game. But they've got to blow and show that they have not been drinking. So it's great technology, but this mom thought she could get around it. Now, this apparently just went down a few days ago where a witness states the mother made her eight-year-old daughter blow into the ignition interlock. The devices are actually meant to prevent people with DUI convictions from driving drunk again or killing anybody. The car will not start if the driver has a blood alcohol over the limit, which typically is 0.08.

Well, shortly after that, after the little girl blows into the device, she crashes the car with the daughter in it and then allegedly leaves the scene. Leaves the scene. Then found at home after police respond to the crash report. She's taken into custody for blood alcohol screening and found to be intoxicated. There is an unverified online record of a previous arrest for this woman, but I can tell you this much, Alan, you don't have this kind of device on your car just for the fun of it. That's not how this works. So now what do we do? I mean, I've often heard of people bypassing, for instance, drug tests by getting someone else to urinate and use that sample, a clean sample. So drugs don't show up.

But I've never heard of anyone using a child's breath to beat a lock device on the car. What about you? I'm sure this has been done. But with a child, could she lose custody of her child? She is charged with corrupting this eight-year-old. Yeah, she absolutely can, because not only did she circumvent the law by using a child, it's like taking a child in with you to an armed robbery or shoplifting. She's using the child to get around the law, to beat the law. And then she had the wherewithal to do that.

But then she had a crash. So she can't say, oh, I was so drunk, I didn't know what I was doing. Because she had the wherewithal to beat the system, so to speak. So yeah, she's totally going to lose custody. I don't know for good, but for now. We're talking about an ignition interlock system device. It's a breath alcohol ignition interlock device called an IID or a BAIID. It's basically a breathalyzer, an individual personal breathalyzer that's attached to your car and it requires the driver to blow into a mouthpiece, and the car will not start until you blow into the mouthpiece every single time you crank the car up. If the resulting breath, and it gets analyzed immediately,

is greater than the programmed B8 blood alcohol concentration, the device will not allow the engine to start. Now, the thing is located inside the vehicle near the driver's seat, and it's directly connected to the engine's ignition system. What it does is it interrupts the signal from the ignition to the starter of the car until a sober breath sample is provided. So that's how that whole thing works. It's really ingenious. Now at random times after the engine has been started, it can also require another breath

sample. Did you know that, Alan? Before you answer that question, Alan, hold on. I want to say thanks Simply Safe, home alarm system, home security system for making our podcast possible. Simply Safe is something I believe in. We have been pitched a lot of products, a lot of ideas that I have nixed because I didn't believe in them. I do believe in Simply Safe. Simply Safe makes home security affordable. I mean, even when I was a county prosecutor, having to work two night jobs to make my house payment, I had a security system in my house. Now with my twins, we have home security. A lot of people think they can't afford it. You can. It's $14.99 a month with 10% off if you go

to simplisafe.com slash Nancy. I don't think you can put a price on protecting your family. And I don't mean possessions. You know, sure. What would I save? I would save my grandmother's engagement ring. I would probably save the letters my fiance wrote me before he was killed. Let's see. I'd probably try to save all our family albums that I've worked so hard on.

The rest of it, you know, forget it. But what about my twins? What about that? I mean, it's not just about possessions. So I want to thank Simply Safe for making today possible. Thank you, Simply Safe. Alan was just asking a question. Did you know about these alcohol ignition interlock devices. Catch this. Once you actually blow into the device and you crank up, it can randomly, for no reason, just suddenly make you blow again. At random times after the engine has been started, the ID will require another breath sample.

Whoopsie! So she can use her daughter's breath, and then five minutes later as she's driving, it could ask for another breath. Did you know that? They have other ways of also keeping you from working around it. Some of these systems actually have cameras, and will take a picture of who's behind the wheel and who's doing the test. People complain, oh, it gives me false positives.

I'm stuck out here on the side of the road. I'm perfectly sober. I only ate pizza. I didn't drink anything. I only ate pizza. What? And I'm getting a false positive. You know, I mean, that whole thing about mouthwash can show up in all of that. They think that they need a workaround. So what do they do? If you go online, you can find videos to show you how to work around these things. Like one video on YouTube shows you how to use compressed air, like, you know, a can of compressed air. Another thing is you can, of course, ask the friend in

the seat, not your eight-year-old daughter, but somebody else to blow for you. You kind of make it sound like you think it's okay for your friend to do it. No, I'm saying that it actually doesn't work to do that because now they're putting cameras on these things and they can go back and look and see who was blowing ah right well this is what we're talking about everybody a an allegedly drunk mother gets her daughter her eight-year-old little girl to blow into the anti-dui device to start her car say police now this goes down in chambersburg and they say the woman who had a device on her car that blocked her from drinking and driving got her taught let's see that would be a second grader to blow into the machine so she could crank up then she goes and

crashes the car with the daughter in sight now if is true, she knowingly drove with her child, her baby, in the car. Right now, the 36-year-old mom from Waynesboro is charged with drunk driving, child endangerment, corruption of minors, traffic offenses. It was a one-car crash. Thank goodness she didn't kill somebody else. At 11 o'clock at night, she's out with the daughter drinking at 11 o'clock at night. Now, according to police, she flees the scene and goes home. But a witness reports seeing her coercing her daughter to blow into the car's ignition device.

I mean, that really takes the cake. It really does. She's in a lot of trouble. And especially if this is one of those systems that has the camera. Nancy, when we do this podcast and you, when you open up your computer, your laptop, it takes a picture of you, right? Did you notice that? Did you know it? And it says, hello, Nancy? No. You don't use that? No. I've got the same computer that you've got. And when I open it up and I look at the camera. you mean I've got to go put on makeup? No, no, Nancy, it's just going to, it's just a digital thing that if it recognizes you, then you don't have to type your password in. That same kind of technology could be put

into these things. But here's what happens if you're caught bypassing the system. It's a privilege. These ignition interlock devices didn't used to exist. So once this crackdown, you know, with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and all of that started, and they started actually punishing people for driving under the influence convictions, that was really in the 80s when that crackdown started. For a lot of times, these people, they'd lose their jobs. They couldn't go to work. They couldn't live their lives behind the wheel. But these ignition interlocks, as a privilege, if you qualify for it, cost a little bit of money and are an inconvenience. But they allow you to drive.

If you're caught violating this, what happens is you're taken off the program, you can't drive, and your DUI sentence is extended. But this woman could possibly lose her 8-year-old daughter custody of her child because of it. She was taken straight to Chambersburg Hospital for a blood draw and, according to reports, was found to be under the influence still. I mean, this is what? She got her daughter to blow into the device. She then cranks up, drives away, crashes the car, flees the scene, goes home, gets busted, gets dragged, arrested by police, then gets taken to the hospital, finally has a blood draw. And what I'm saying is, if she's still.08, she must have had a snoot full. Yeah, I guess she did. I guess she did, to put it in technical legal terms. Maybe she was so drunk that she used really bad judgment with her eight-year-old

child. And speaking of moms, now we've got a Maryland mom who allegedly drugs her five-year-old son. He's so cute and leaves him for dead in a burning car. A Maryland mother charged with drugging her five-year-old son, putting him in a car and lighting it on fire. What? It was like Benadryl. It was Benadryl she gave him. What about that, Alan? Very shocking. She reportedly forced her son to drink 338 milligrams of diphenhydramine, which is the active ingredient in medications like Benadryl. After administering a lethal dose, she sets the car Dana was in, locked in, on fire, and staged it to look like an accident, according to the Washington Post. Now, police believe her motive was, quote, misguided retaliation against the husband. The pair were in the middle of a bitter divorce and had been fighting since

2013. They only went on 2017, and in just six years, it had all gone to hell in a handbasket. They had joint custody, and they had one issue after the next. She just claims she couldn't handle it. Well, you know what? She thought of a way out, and that included killing her son. Oh, I'm just sick about it. She's going to have a lot of time to think about it. What was her prison sentence? She's getting a half century in prison? Yeah.

I don't know if she'll do that because it looks like it's going to be, it looks like a plea. Right. But police say she intentionally crashed her Toyota Corolla and used water jugs filled with gasoline to douse the interior. She actually told cops she gave her son medicine to treat a fever, but the mom also claimed she had gasoline bottles in case she couldn't find a gas station. The last time I heard that was with Jody Arias. What a cute little kid. I'm looking at these pictures of him. He's smiling. Looks like a good kid. I'm sure he was a good kid. Five years old. It was a fatal dose. He was dead in the car and she was disposing of the body. Is that it? I don't know if it was an amount that could lead

to death. I know that she, I just wonder also, had she done this before, but it is absolutely first-degree murder. And I'm just beside myself because I remember how helpless the twins were at age five. What I can do right now is just pray, God, take little Daniel into thy care. Daniel Dana, the poor little guy. I mean, I know his life must have just been pure hell. Guys, I want to thank you for being with us this day on Crime Stories. You know, it never, ever stops shocking me when I read never found a way to be deadened to it. And I guess that even though the stories we cover are sometimes very disturbing, the point is that we are still shocked. And that means we still care. you for caring about these victims and these stories because the only way we can ever make a change in this world is if we care, and I certainly still do. I want to thank Alan Duke

for being with me and SimpliSafe, our awesome sponsor who makes home security possible at simplisafe.com. And most of all, and I'm sure I don't say it enough, I want to thank you for being with us. Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.