....live in a state run by a bat**** crazy governor and attorney general...


Bottled-water purchase leads to night in jail for UVa student

Posted: Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:37 pm

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on
University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates
panicked.

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the
Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to
her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased
from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a
sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes
approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to
be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of
her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to
flee the darkened parking lot.

"They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but
we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,"
she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.

"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I
started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the
car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ...
terrified," Daly stated.

Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly's account
and said it was factually consistent.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the
agents were. But that wasn't good enough for ABC agents, who charged her
with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in
Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can't understand
why she sat in jail.


"This has been an extremely trying experience," she wrote. "It is
something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this
point."

A gents at ABC's regional office in Staunton deferred to the agency's
public affairs office in Richmond. Spokeswoman Carol Mawyer would not
provide details of the arrest or ABC's investigative procedures, except
to say that all agents wear plainclothes and carry metal badges.

Agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement
officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a
maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense.

Chapman said he'd never encountered a situation like this in his 34
years of experience.

"It wouldn't be the right thing to do to prosecute this," he said,
noting that no one was hurt during the exchange, which took place around
10:15 p.m.

Daly incurred the assault charges when she "grazed" two agents with her
SUV, according to court records. She drove the SUV past the agents after
her front-seat passenger, in a panic, yelled at Daly to "go, go, go" and
climbed into the rear of the vehicle to gain space from the men on her
side of the car, the records state.

The woman was on edge after spending the night listening to stories from
dozens of sexual assault survivors at an annual "Take Back the Night"
vigil on Grounds, said Daly's defense attorney, Francis Lawrence.

The women dialed 911 as they pulled out of the parking lot to report
what was happening and ask whether the agents were police officers. Daly
said she was planning to drive to a police station. She stopped the SUV
nearby for an agent driving a vehicle with lights and sirens, Chapman said.

Chapman stood by the agents' decision to file charges, citing faith in a
process that yielded an appropriate resolution.

"You don't know all the facts until you complete the investigation," he
said.


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