You've got to hand it to Catherine Giaquinto, a Warwick, NY resident who was arrested and charged with drunk driving after allegedly crashing her Jetta into a stone retaining wall in Sparta, NJ just before 1 a.m. on Friday. The 36-year-old woman may have been in hot water when she was pulled over after allegedly fleeing the scene, but that didn't stop her from correcting a cop who falsely accused her of Driving While Naked. She was, in fact, wearing a leather jacket. Yes, it may have been unzipped, but Merriam-Webster clearly defines "naked" as "not covered by clothing." Nice try, copper.
NJ.com notes that temperatures in the area were below 16 degrees Fahrenheit Friday, but it's still unclear why Giaquinto was driving with so few clothes. When Pensado asked Giaquinto why she was driving in the nude, police say she "denied being completely naked." Officer Joseph Pensado pulled her over there was damage to the car's left-front fender, the driver-side door and the rear-left door, and Giaquinto's slurred speech led Pensado to believe she was driving under the influence. The local news reports:
[Giaquinto's] speech was badly slurred and mostly unintelligible. She could not remember if she had been involved in an accident and did not know where she was going... The officer observed a dress and other articles of clothing in plain view on the rear passenger seat of the vehicle. He retrieved these items and directed Giaquinto to get dressed. It took approximately 10 minutes for Giaquinto to put her clothes on and when she was done, the officer noted that she had put her dress on inside out and backwards.
After allegedly failing a field sobriety test (police say she couldn't even stand without losing her balance), Giaquinto was taken to the local station and charged with driving while intoxicated, refusal to submit to breath testing, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to report an accident, careless driving, and failure to wear a seatbelt. She must have sweet-talked her way out of that failure to wear pants rap.
