An Australian mayor downed “several glasses of wine” and crashed her car into a tree just hours after meeting with the families of drunk drivers and vowing to fight the deadly scourge, according to reports.
Karen Williams, mayor of the Queensland town of Redlands, was blasted by the families she’d met with after the embarrassing episode last week revealed her hypocrisy. One victim’s loved one said the mayor called her in tears to apologize after the crash.
“[I told her], ‘we trusted you and you let us down … You’re the one supposed to be helping us to raise awareness and you’ve let us all down,’” Judy Lindsay, whose daughter Hayley was killed by a drunk driver in 2009, told 7news.com.au. “She is lucky she didn’t kill someone.”
In Australia, a drunk mayor crashed after meeting with the families of crash victims. via /r/nottheonion https://t.co/FRSgucwCJp pic.twitter.com/IN7L0vHUcM
— Lost At Home Podcast (@TheLostAtHome) June 28, 2022
Lindsay called for Williams to immediately resign.
Williams, 55, had earlier met with Lindsay and the families of pregnant couple Kate Leadbetter and Matthew Field, who were killed in January 2021 along with their unborn baby by a drunk teen in a stolen car. She called the 10-year sentence meted out to the teen “manifestly inadequate.”
“We talked about road safety awareness, we talked about drink driving, we talked about drug driving, we talked about how we were going to change the youth justice act and how we were going to get this story out,” Lindsay told 7NEWS.
Williams pledged to make stopping drunk driving her political “legacy,” Lindsay said.
Williams, who admitted having “several glasses of wine” before the crash, has so far refused to resign, claiming it would be a “rash decision.” She has not been charged with the accident. She suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital.
“There are no excuses for my actions,” Williams said in a televised news conference. “I made a serious error of judgment and I will continue to service this community and I am deeply regretful for those actions. Fortunately there were no injuries, and no one else was involved.”
Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said Williams must face the consequences for her actions.
“I have zero tolerance for drunk driving, and it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what you do, it doesn’t matter where you live: you should never put yourself in that position,” he told reporters on Monday.
“And there has to be consequences for actions.”
Most Australian jurisdictions have blood-alcohol limits of .05% for drivers, and steep fines and criminal penalties for those convicted of the offense.