Woman arrested twice for DUI overnight Tuesday by same HPD officer
By Matthew Nuttle
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HONOLULU, Hawaii (KITV) — Fool me once, shame on you… An Oahu woman was arrested under suspicion of driving under the influence, not once, but twice overnight in Honolulu, according to police logs.
As if that’s not outrageous enough, the same Honolulu Police (HPD) officer who pulled her over the first time also arrested the 26-year-old woman a second time less than two hours after she bailed out for the first alleged offense.
According to HPD, Officer Steven Gomez pulled the suspect – later identified as Waiola Latronic – over just before 12:45 a.m. in the area of Palolo Avenue and Carlos Long Street.
During that traffic stop, Latronic was arrested and booked on a complaint of operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant. She was later released after posting $500 bail at 2:20 a.m., according to police logs.
Then, just after 4 a.m., Officer Gomez pulled a vehicle over on the westbound side of the H-1 Freeway, near the King Street off ramp, and found Latronic behind the wheel. During this stop, she was arrested again under suspicion of DUI.
Latronic was booked again on a complaint of operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant. She was released for the second time just before 10 a.m. after posting $1,000 bail.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s Hawaii local President-elect told KITV, he and others have seen this type of double offense before, “In my years as a police officer, I have experienced it a couple of times where I have arrested the same offender. And on one occasion in the 90s, they were more impaired the second time they were arrested,” Kurt Kendro said.
Kendro says Oahu does not impound vehicles after drunk driving incidents as the county of Maui started recently doing in 2019.
“Most people would learn that if you get arrested the first time, that you wouldn’t get back into a car and start driving away while you are still impaired,” Kendro told KITV, “If somebody bailed that person out, that they wouldn’t let that person drive.”
“We are hoping that legislatively we could probably fix this: if law enforcement was allowed to impound the car, at least overnight, to prevent the person from going back to the car and driving away again,” Kendro concluded.
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