It was a clear, 50 degree night in downtown Lexington on October 21st when, at 8:30 PM, Fayette County Public Schools Human Resources Director Melodee Parker drove her red 2005 Toyota Solara into two parked cars and one brick wall in the parking lot at Short and Market Streets. According to Lexington-Fayette County police records she admitted to being on her phone at the time. She was also arrested for operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, her first such offense, and cited for failure to maintain required insurance.Parker, whose job requires her to deal with errant FCPS employees, now finds herself on the wrong side of the conference table. Her boss, Fayette County schools Superintendent Tom Shelton, will now be required by law to report the arrest to the Kentucky Educational Professional Standards Board.
According to police records, Parker, a resident of Versailles, said she had left from Crossgate Gallery on Main Street and was going to The Trust restaurant and bar, having already consumed three glasses of wine by the time of the crash. She was not in traffic but lost control of her car as she was turning into the parking lot. There were no injuries sustained by Parker or anyone else.
Prior to her arrest, Parker contacted Attorney James Springate, and she failed a standard set of field sobriety tests administered by the arresting officer. Parker was unable to complete the One-leg Stand test, missed two criteria in the Walk and Turn test, Mixed up L and Q when reciting the alphabet, repeated 38 when counting backwards from 59 to 34 and failed the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test. The officer administered an intoxilyzer test and Parker blew a .123, exceeding the .08 limit set by law. Parker chose to undergo an independent blood test which was completed at 10 PM at Samaritan Hospital. Results of the test are not known to KSN&C. She was released on a $550 cash bond and was arraigned on October 24th.
In Kentucky, any driver with a blood-alcohol concentration above .08 percent is measured “per se intoxicated” under the law. Under this statute, this verification is all that is necessary for a driver to be convicted of Driving Under the Influence (DUI). Alcohol education and prevention programs can be required for DUI offenders in Kentucky and are often recommended instead of serving a sentence of incarceration or paying fines. Parker had previously been referred by the court to Traffic School in December 2007.
KSN&C invited Parker to comment on the situation, including the results of the independent blood test, but received no response. Superintendent Tom Shelton told KSN&C that the district would respond to the incident. "This is a personnel issue and I cannot be more specific other than to say we are responding according to district policy and the law," Shelton said. It is standard practice in Fayette County to require employees with DUI's to undergo counseling through the Employee Assistance Program.
According to EPSB's legal department, they will wait for the courts to render a final judgment before responding. At that point, the matter will go before the board, which will consider the totality of the situation before rendering a decision on her certificate. The likely result for a first-time DUI offender blowing a .123 is a public reprimand and counseling, which would be reflected in the EPSB minutes.
The general purpose of DUI counseling is to provide information to offenders regarding the impact of alcohol use on individual behavior and driving skills, and to further explore the personal ramifications of their own substance use and abuse.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, every minute, one person is injured from an alcohol-related crash; drunk driving costs each adult in this country almost $500 per year; one in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime; in a typical year, 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes - one every 50 minutes; and an average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before his or her first arrest.
According to the Kentucky Transportation Center's analysis of traffic crash data (2005-2009), the total number of alcohol-related crashes in 2009 decreased by 5 percent compared to the previous five-year average. However, alcohol-related collisions still account for a disproportionate amount of the fatalities. Alcohol-related crashes in Kentucky were a mere 4.1 percent of the total collisions in 2009, but they accounted for 26 percent of the fatalities.
