Newly released footage shows Krista Perez, a Democrat running for a state House seat in Washington, crying, sobbing, and praying in the back of a patrol car after being arrested for allegedly driving under the influence (DUI).

“Police body camera also shows Perez admitting she’d been drinking wine and refusing field sobriety tests after officers say she crashed into a parked car, damaging five vehicles,” Fox News wrote.

Perez finished first in last month’s primary in the 29th Legislative District, Position 1, and will face incumbent state Rep. Melanie Morgan, also a Democrat.

The two Democrats were the top candidates in the primary and advanced to November’s general election.

Watch below:

Fox News shared further:

Tacoma Police said Perez’s 2019 Chevrolet Silverado allegedly struck a parked car on South G Street shortly after midnight on August 11, setting off a chain reaction that damaged five vehicles, according to The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red.

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Prosecutors charged her with DUI, with a refusal enhancement in connection with the collision and a later encounter with police.

Body camera footage shows police questioning Perez after the crash and her subsequent arrest, while footage from the backseat of the patrol car shows her praying and sobbing, according to video obtained by The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red.

After police arrived at the scene, Perez told an officer she did not understand what was going on and claimed she was not involved in an accident, the footage shows.

“Did you get into an accident here?” the officer asks.

“I did not,” Perez responded.

The officer then asked what happened.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in an accident before,” she replied.

Jason Rantz shared additional footage:

Seattle Red shared further:

Perez tells the officer she was coming from a friend’s business on Tacoma Avenue South. Then he asked the obvious question.

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“Did you have anything to drink tonight?” the officer asked.

“I just had some wine while I was there,” Perez replies.

The officer pressed her on how much.

“I had a glass of wine, one glass of wine,” she said.

When he asks how big the glass was, she told him, “I think you might need to contact the business.”

The officer then asked her to rate herself on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being sober. She first answered that she wants to go home. Asked a second time, she rated herself a four.

The officer offered standardized field sobriety tests and told Perez more than once that she can decline.

“So it’s a series of tests that I take you through to make sure to see if you’re impaired by alcohol, or you’re not. Are you okay with doing that? It’s totally voluntary,” he said.

Perez told him she does not know what the tests are and that she is confused by all of it. She kept coming back to the same request to leave the scene of the accident. And repeatedly explained that she was “confused.”

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“Not right now. I’d like to go home first,” she said before the officer shut that down.

“You’re not going to go home first. I’m going to tell you that right now, okay? So your options between the test, yes or no, that’s going to be determined tonight, right now, not when you go home. So would you like to take these tests or no?” he asked.

“And do I have a choice?” Perez asked.

“You do have a choice. You can either say yes, or you can say no. They’re totally voluntary tests,” the officer answered.

“Yeah, I would like to go home first,” she said.

He asked whether that is a no. She said yes, and he told her to put her hands behind her back.

Washington does not require drivers to take roadside sobriety tests. The refusal enhancement in her case comes from what happened later at Tacoma Police headquarters. According to the police report filed with the charge, she failed to give a usable breath sample in three attempts before the machine timed out.

 

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