A 25-year-old Milwaukee man arrested for drunken driving that caused a two-car rollover crash Sunday faces a number of criminal charges in Racine County Circuit Court.
Luis J. Ortiz Ruiz was charged Monday with three felony counts of operating while intoxicated, causing injury with a minor child in the vehicle, along with misdemeanor counts of knowingly violating a domestic abuse injunction and reckless driving causing injury.
The drunken driving charges, the defendant’s first, each carry a maximum fine of $4,000 and up to two years in prison. The domestic abuse injunction-related charge carries a fine of $10,000 and nine months in the Racine County Jail, while the reckless driving charge carries a fine of $2,000 and up to a year in the county jail.
Oritz Ruiz will return to court for a preliminary hearing June 27 at 8:30 a.m.
According to the criminal complaint:
Deputies with the Racine County Sheriff’s Department were dispatched to the rollover crash at about 6:10 p.m. Sunday on Interstate 94 near 6 Mile Road.
Ortiz Ruiz was driving a blue Hyundai when he crashed into the side of a silver Nissan sedan, which caused both cars to flip over several times before they came to rest near the East Frontage Road.
Three children, ages 11, 9 and 5, who were passengers in the defendant’s vehicle, were found lying in the grass in front of the overturned Hyundai. All three were being attended to by medical personnel with injuries to their arms, hands, and face.
Deputies spoke with the driver of the Nissan, who said that she was in the right lane and observed the Hyundai in her rear-view mirror weaving between lanes. She stated that “all of a sudden, she was hit by the blue Hyundai, and her car began to roll.”
When officers spoke to Ortiz Ruiz, they could smell an odor of intoxicants from his breath. They also observed that he had bloodshot and glassy eyes and that his speech was slow and slurred. Police found an empty open bottle of intoxicants in his vehicle, along with
an empty beer bottle and a cigar wrapper with a strong odor of marijuana.
Ortiz Ruiz told police he had “two or three beers.” A legal blood draw was performed at Ascension-All Saints Hospital. Results of that are pending.
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