A 9-year-old Texas boy was critically injured this week when his mother, apparently drunk, crashed into two parked cars and then abandoned the child on the scene.
Monica Tutt, 39, was charged with intoxication assault and collision involving injury when Dallas Police found her early Wednesday morning, KDFW reported.
An arrest warrant says that witnesses heard the crash and rushed out to see what happened. They said Tutt tried to restart her car to flee the scene, but it was too badly damaged.
“[The witness] yelled at the suspect to unlock the car while the suspect continued to yell and scream, attempting to start the car back up. She stated it was obvious that the suspect was drunk,” the affidavit says.
A few minutes later, Tutt’s sister arrived on the scene, and Tutt climbed into her driver’s seat. The sister prevented her from leaving at that point.
Tutt and her sister took the unresponsive child out of the backseat of Tutt’s car and tried unsuccessfully to put him into the sister’s car.
Dallas Fire-Rescue crews arrived on the scene, but, according to witnesses, the sister and another family member put Tutt into their car and left, leaving the badly injured child behind.
The boy was rushed to the hospital with a gash on his head deep enough to reveal his skull. Doctors also said he had air in his brain, a brain bleed, and a fractured skull.
Meanwhile, officers identified Tutt from her car’s license plate and found her at her sister’s home after identifying the sister’s vehicle from photos witnesses took of her license plate.
Officers brought her back to the crash site, noting that she had “glassy/watery eyes and a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from her breath as she spoke,” the affidavit said.
“[Tutt] kept saying that her chance at a nursing career was over,” the affidavit says. “[She] kept stating throughout the interview, ‘I did the same thing I always do,’ and ‘I want my son.’”
Tutt told officers she’d only had a few drinks, but failed both a field sobriety test and a preliminary breathalyzer test.
She was taken to a hospital for a blood test and booked into the Dallas County Jail.
