RIVERSIDE, IL — A man who was driving drunk in Riverside last weekend had his 6-year-old child in the car and sleeping on a case of beer, police in the suburb said. Abner Valentin, 35, of Cicero faces several charges in the incident police say occurred just after midnight on Aug. 3 in the area of Ogden Avenue and Harlem.
A police officer on patrol at that time said a black Ford was “traveling at a high rate of speed” westbound on Ogden around that time, going 50 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone. The car veered into oncoming traffic before it was stopped, police said.
The driver, who police say was Valentin, could not provide a license or proof of insurance, but police did say he did emit an odor of alcohol from inside the car. The officer said a sleeping child was spotted in the back seat without a seat belt or child seat and was “laying across an open case of beer.”
The 6-year-old was taken into police protective custody until a relative could pick the child up nearly two hours later at the police station.
Police say Valentin failed all sobriety tests, was charged with several offenses including a DUI and endangering the life of a child and became “extremely verbally combative” during the booking process.
According to police, Valentin told them they should instead be out “catching real criminals.”
Police also contacted DCFS and filed a child welfare notification based on the accusation that he “was driving drunk and had his child unrestrained in the car laying across beer bottles.”
The Riverside Police Department has cracked down on parents driving drunk in the past. In April 2018, Police Chief Thomas Weitzel said the department had arrested the “worst DUI offender in the United States” when a mother of 11 was found passed out behind the wheel of her vehicle at a gas station. The woman was reportedly had six prior DUI arrests in six different states.