DUII rolls through TD

He and his wife were heading south on Lincoln by Montira’s Thai Cuisine when an oncoming car drove across the traffic island at Third and Lincoln. “She hit a sign and then she started pretty much coming head-on to us,” he said.

He assumed she was driving distracted, maybe texting. She waved them by so they continued eastbound on Third. “Next thing I know I’m looking in my rear view mirror and she’s all over the road.”

“She passed us at a high rate of speed, in and out of traffic, it was crazy,” Woods said.

He got her license number and called 911. He followed her as she drove all through downtown, with a preference for right turns.

“She was swerving, fast, slow, slow roll, idle. It was from slow to fast, fast to slow,” he said.

“She went through, thank goodness there were green lights all the way down,” he said.

She turned right on Jefferson, and right on Fourth. “We made kind of a little ‘s’ pattern through town,” Woods said.

She stopped at a red light on Laughlin. When it turned green, she didn’t proceed. “She was still stopped and she looked like she was slumped over, and that’s when she started rolling slowly through Second, through a red light, and hit a parked car,” Woods said.

“It seemed like she woke up at that time and she swerved back to Laughlin, went down to First street, took a right, and kept going,” he said.

She went around the block, and got back on Second Street. “It was Second and Laughlin where we finally got her stopped,” he said.

She was in the lefthand lane, and pulled in behind a parked SUV. Woods pulled up next to her on her passenger side to block her in. He was still in the lane of travel, but stopped his vehicle to prevent her from getting back into traffic.

He went to her door and opened it, reached in to put the car in park, and then took the keys.

“She looked confused,” he said. “She was talking to me, but very confused.”

At that point, off-duty The Dalles Police Det. Travis Elton showed up. “I don’t really know where he came from,” Woods said. “All I know is after I got the keys away from her and put them up, I heard him say, ‘Hal, what’s going on?’”

The woman was taken to the hospital where she consented to having blood and urine samples taken.

Dawn Marie Labelle, 64, of The Dalles, was cited and released at the hospital. She was charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants, reckless driving, reckless endangering, and two counts of hit and run, said The Dalles Police Det. Doug Kramer.

Kramer said he was “glad no one was injured.”