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Second recent DUI occurs with child in car

Jason Auslander
The Aspen Times
Aura Aroche-Morales
drunkdriver-atd-050416jpg

An Old Snowmass woman received her second DUI in five weeks Saturday after her 7-year-old daughter told police her mother was driving a car found crashed into a guardrail near Holland Hills, according to a law enforcement report.

Aura Aroche-Morales, 34, denied driving the wrecked car, first saying that she’d been on the bus, then later telling officers her friend had been driving but had run off after the crash, according to a Pitkin County sheriff’s deputy’s report. She said she didn’t know the friend’s name or phone number.

“I told her I understood what she was telling me,” Deputy Levi Borst wrote, “but I also told her I didn’t believe her story.”



Aroche-Morales’ 7-year-old daughter told deputies her mother was driving, showed them where they’d both been sitting in the car and said “there was no mystery ‘friend” at all,” the report states.

In addition, Borst found a partially-consumed bottle of tequila on the passenger floorboard of the car, according to the report.



When Borst arrived at the scene just before 7 p.m., he saw a green station wagon crashed into a guardrail alongside Highway 82 near Holland Hills. When he first contacted Aroche-Morales he could “immediately” tell she was “heavily impaired,” the report states.

A Basalt police officer on the scene reported that Aroche-Morales attempted to walk away toward the bus stop when he arrived, according to the report. She later declined breath alcohol tests, the report states.

Aroche-Morales was arrested and charged with DUI, careless driving, driving without a license, driving without insurance and child abuse. Another deputy gave her daughter a ride to a friend’s house and notified the child’s father of what happened, the report states.

Aroche-Morales also was arrested for drunken driving March 21 after an Eagle County sheriff’s deputy found her passed out in her car at the intersection of Highway 82 and Basalt Avenue about 3:42 a.m., according to court records. Her breath alcohol content at the time was 0.119, which is more than the legal driving limit of 0.08.

She was charged with DUI, driving without a license and obstructing the highway in connection with that incident.

jauslander@aspentimes.com


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