Drunk Driving

For the last seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunk driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an "ignition interlock," acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he's sober before the engine will start. New Mexico, which led the nation in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state to require the interlock for every convicted drunk driver.

Ryan Dallas Cook was homeward bound on his motorcycle on an October night in 2005 when he clipped a stalled, darkened SUV that had rammed into a concrete barrier on the 55 Freeway, an impact that hurled him to the pavement, where he was hit by several passing cars and died. Police said the driver of the SUV was a Hyundai executive who had allegedly spent a long night drinking.

Everyone knows it's dangerous and illegal for a sloppy drunk to get behind the wheel and power the car home through an alcoholic haze. And it's certainly dangerous and illegal for a tipsy twentysomething starlet or a trashed fortysomething actor to buzz through city streets among the rest of us. Consider it sheer luck if their reckless behavior hasn't yet caused injury or death.

The day after Westminster City Councilman Andy Quach was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving for crashing his Mercedes-Benz into a pole and knocking out power to more than 300 homes, further investigation revealed that Quach's car and another moving vehicle had collided just moments before, Westminster police said. Quach was driving east on McFadden Avenue just after midnight Sunday when he hit another car that was also traveling east, said Sgt. Dan Schoonmaker.

Charles Barkley didn't blame a wife or a cousin or the family dog for putting some unknown substance into his glass or forcing him to get behind the wheel of some unidentifiable vehicle after having a drink. Barkley came back to the TNT "Inside The NBA" show Thursday night for the first time in nearly two months and he was mostly just Charles, maybe biting his lip a little but also accepting blame for his arrest in December for driving under the influence.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary was trying to revive his wife in the middle of the road when a witness came upon his smashed-up car on a rural state highway near Ojai. "He was yelling, 'Don't die, Gretchen! Don't die!,' " said former Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, one of the first witnesses on the scene after the single-car crash early Sunday that left one man dead and Avary's wife, Gretchen, seriously injured.

Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony said Tuesday he was "truly sorry" for his arrest on DUI charges, and police denied giving him special treatment, even though one officer gave him a lift after his arrest and another drove his car to a city lot. "I'm here to man up to my mistake, just to let you know that I'm truly sorry for what happened and everything that's going on," Anthony, 23, said in Denver with teammate Allen Iverson by his side.

The state attorney general's office Monday filed drunk driving and other charges against a woman whose traffic confrontation with an off-duty police officer ended with her and her 8-year-old son being shot. Rachel Silva, 27, was charged with felony child endangerment for putting her son in "circumstances likely to produce great bodily injury or death."

The Los Angeles plastic surgeon who operated on rap star Kanye West's mother before she died last year was arrested in Solano County early Thursday on suspicion of drunk driving and driving on a suspended license. Dr. Jan Adams was stopped by the California Highway Patrol after it received calls about 2:41 a.m. of a car traveling south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 680 near Benicia after using an offramp to enter the freeway, officials said.

A Los Angeles police officer assigned to the elite Metropolitan Division is under investigation for allegedly driving drunk, striking two pedestrians with his Hummer and then fleeing the scene, authorities said. William J. Skett, an eight-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, was arrested June 20 by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies at his home about 2:30 a.m., an hour after the pedestrians were injured in a Saugus parking lot.