Posted on 12/30/2009 5:45:44 AM PST by maddog55
A Sturgis woman had a blood-alcohol level of .708 percent, possibly a state record, when she was found earlier this month behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle parked on Interstate 90, according to Meade County State’s Attorney Jesse Sondreal.
A South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper discovered Marguerite Engle, 45, on Dec. 1 passed out behind the wheel of a delivery truck reported stolen in Rapid City.
Her blood-alcohol level was almost nine times South Dakota’s legal limit of .08 percent.
Checks with local and state labs where blood-alcohol levels are tested suggest Engle’s reading may be the highest ever recorded in South Dakota, Sondreal said.
Sondreal said a state chemist recalled a sample that tested .53, but nothing higher, in his more than 30 years on the job.
Dr. Robert Looyenga, who recently retired from the Rapid City Police Department’s forensic laboratory, told Sondreal that the highest blood-alcohol sample he tested measured .56 percent.
Sondreal’s research indicates that a blood-alcohol level of .40 is considered a lethal dose for about 50 percent of the population.
“Engle’s was almost double that,” Sondreal said.
After she was found, Engle was hospitalized and freed on bond.
She failed to appear in court on Dec. 15, but Sturgis police located her Monday evening in another stolen car sitting in a ditch along S.D. Highway 34 near Fort Meade.
Engle was arrested for second offense driving under the influence and taken to jail.
Engle made her initial appearance in Meade County magistrate court Tuesday. She is being held without bond.
Sondreal said Engle has been living in a hotel after recently moving here from Minnesota.
Engle is most likely facing charges in Pennington County since both vehicles were stolen in Rapid City, Sondreal said.
damnit...thought it said “topless”.
CC
Long story short, the cop and this guy rolled around for a bit until help arrived. At the hospital the doctors told the cop that the guy had a BAC of about .5, and the only thing that was keeping him alive was the amount of cocaine he had in his system.
I would assume something similar was occuring in this woman's system.
She is number 1, she is number 1......
WoWza! And I thought .4 was lethal? A female Frank the Tank?
What are we supposed to do with people like this?
You could win a lot of bar bets with someone like that !
“Hey Lady! I bet you can drink me under the table!”
I blew a .12 on my buddy’s personal “AlcoScan” breathalyzer after 12 beers, but I’m also 6’2” 275 lbs. I can’t fathom how much alcohol this woman must’ve consumed to make it to this inhuman feat.
Naw. She’s just a real pro at drinking.
I’ve seen people walking and talking, just barely slurring their words and had BAC’s of over 300....
Dude!
Lets buy that woman a drink!
Sending her to prison won’t help. Most people who have been in the joint say they got better drugs and more booze inside than they did on the outside.
WOW ...I feel like such an Amateur, as the best I could ever do was .38%
A Friend of mine, blew a .45 . He got off the DUI, as 3 Drs and 1 Hospital lab tech told the judge.. That there was no possible way any human could drive with that number, and that the officer ticketed a DEAD MAN.
Granted that was in 1979, when the were only starting to get serious on DUI.
What a hottie!
Karen Allen was a cutie back in the day.
and then some....
I wonder if they checked the anti-freeze in the truck?
The record here is more than likely the result of a malfunctioning contaminated detector. It would be interesting to know what an actual test of her actual blood showed. My bet would be that an actual blood sample would indicate that her alcohol level was less than half what was indicated.
"I wasn't sloshed. That woman in Sturgis? Now she was totally faced!"
Yikes! Professional.
Yeah, a 45 year old topless drunken woman. That sure would be a pretty sight.
It’s always satisfying to be the best at SOMETHING.
Did anyone test Teddy Kennedy? Would probably fry the meter
I have never seen this woman and assume, as most do ,that alcohol has been a major factor in her life for many years and has probably taken a deep toll on her body and her looks.
However there are plenty of 45 year old women who are gorgeous, would look great topless, and might get drunk occassionally.
Chop a hole in an ice-covered lake, drop them in, and wait a few hours for the ice to melt.
Due to their smaller size, nearly all of these records are set by women. It takes quite a tolerance to survive at that level and women seem to handle it better. My buddy almost died at 0.35
During my time at Penn State, cops tested a still-wobbling underage female student in the whopping 0.50-0.60 range.
Stimulus Money? Can you say ethanol subsidy. This lady refines sufficient quantities of ethanol from liquor to be an endangered subspecies.
“Karen Allen was a cutie back in the day.”
That she was. And she is still a cutie. She was just naturally pretty; she was pretty just with a freshly washed face and no makeup.
It appears you're stating a common misunderstanding about blood alcohol content measurements. If it were written as .76%, or .0076, rather than .76 percent, it might be easier to see that it is less than 1 part per hundred.
That's a lot, a huge amount, of alcohol, but it's far from being a majority component in the blood.
you might say she was PICKLED!
I’m 6’3”, 210 pounds. If my BAC was above .50 I’d be dead. There is no way she only had booze in her system. There had to be some sort of stimulant that kept her heart beating.
An ex-boyfriend of mine was found several years ago, after no one could contact him for several days, in a coma with a blood-alcohol level of about .5
At the hospital he had a stroke and his family decided to discontinue life support.
He basically spent years committing suicide. Too bad as he was very smart, could fluently speak several foreign languages including Russian.
He had just come from rehab when I dated him, but after a few years he started drinking again & I wanted no part of that, having been married to one alcoholic was enough for me. Too bad, he had so much potential, but just too much emotional baggage.
I always wonder what his blood-alcohol level was when he went into the coma cause it must have dropped quite a bit by the time someone found him.
About 10 years ago, I recall a story at one of the Big 10 campuses where a girl measured .70. Her “friends” were holding her up, dragging her home to sleep it off. An off duty cop spotted them and started asking questions. This got her to the hospital. She would have died if she had tried to “sleep it off.”
A 55 gallon drum of Ripple??
Tell me where they are. I'll start my car.....
; )
Ted was burried rather than cremated because of concerns that normal equipment would not be able to contain the heat.
Given Ted's likley current location it's no longer an issue.
CC
Then I’m glad I began with “It appears you’re stating”, rather than assuming you didn’t know.
Thanks for the clarification.
.4 is lethal to casual drinkers. Alcoholics build up amazing tolerance. Although I admit 708 is a record for me as well. My highest in the last 25 years was somewhere around 650. And the guy was talking!
Add some vermouth next time...
What a piker we’ve had several at 1.0. We routinely see people walk, not carried, into our ER with blood alcohols in this range.
CC
During my paramedic days I remember a few cases where patients had blood alcohol in the 0.3 range and they were generally in respiratory arrest. I can’t imagine anyone having a blood alcohol in this range without being dead, comatose or a Senator from Massachusetts.
CC
“
Sondreal said a state chemist recalled a sample that tested .53,
but nothing higher, in his more than 30 years on the job.
“
For six years, I worked at a private medical/pathology lab that did
blood alcohols (on the matching sample to the one sent to the state laboratory).
The highest I recall is a 0.48. When our lab director called in the
result to the hospital holding the patient, he asked “Is this person
still alive?”
The hospital person said “Yes. The highway patrol found him stumbling
around in the woods maybe 200 hundred yards, wondering what he was
doing there. He was confused and had no clue that his car was wrapped
around a tree, totalled.”
G-d looks after fools. Espeically those aflicted with love of too
much strong drink!
And then afflicted with operating large vehicles at the same time.
Good Lord. Never mind legally drunk. I think that’s technically legally dead.
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