Sandra Donat had been arrested three times already for drunken driving, so she knew that she would need someone sober to blow into the ignition-lock device on her van before it would start.
She chose her 12-year-old son.
Then Donat piled him and four of her other children - all younger than 10 years old at the time - into the vehicle at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2003, and took off for Taco Bell with a beer in hand.
Police arrested her after the van drifted out of its lane, and found that she had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.22, more than twice the state's legal limit at the time.
Donat said she had left a friend's house in Wausau, but police never determined where she was coming from. The officer who followed the van into the restaurant's parking lot on Grand Avenue in Schofield could see that at least one of the children was not wearing a seat belt.
"The nature of this crime is grotesque," Assistant District Attorney Kurt Klomberg said while arguing for a prison sentence at a hearing on Thursday in Marathon County court. "Those lives could have ended because their mother, the person they trusted the most, had the munchies."
Reserve Judge Conrad Richards agreed. He sentenced Donat, 38, of Birnamwood to the maximum sentence of four and a half years in prison, along with another year and a half of extended supervision for three counts of fourth-offense driving while intoxicated - prosecutors can add additional charges of drunken driving for each child who is in the vehicle.
Both the prosecutor and the judge said that other than cases involving a fatal crash, it was the most serious drunken-driving incident that has crossed their desks.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/wdhlocal/283243560984945.shtml
She chose her 12-year-old son.
Then Donat piled him and four of her other children - all younger than 10 years old at the time - into the vehicle at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2003, and took off for Taco Bell with a beer in hand.
Police arrested her after the van drifted out of its lane, and found that she had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.22, more than twice the state's legal limit at the time.
Donat said she had left a friend's house in Wausau, but police never determined where she was coming from. The officer who followed the van into the restaurant's parking lot on Grand Avenue in Schofield could see that at least one of the children was not wearing a seat belt.
"The nature of this crime is grotesque," Assistant District Attorney Kurt Klomberg said while arguing for a prison sentence at a hearing on Thursday in Marathon County court. "Those lives could have ended because their mother, the person they trusted the most, had the munchies."
Reserve Judge Conrad Richards agreed. He sentenced Donat, 38, of Birnamwood to the maximum sentence of four and a half years in prison, along with another year and a half of extended supervision for three counts of fourth-offense driving while intoxicated - prosecutors can add additional charges of drunken driving for each child who is in the vehicle.
Both the prosecutor and the judge said that other than cases involving a fatal crash, it was the most serious drunken-driving incident that has crossed their desks.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/wdhlocal/283243560984945.shtml