Right: These are driving while intoxicated cases reported by Travis County Sheriff’s Office and include a large portion of the Four Points DWI cases so far this year. In addition to these cases, Austin Police Department reported six DWI arrests in 78726 and two in 78730 from Jan. 1 – April 15.

By CASSIE MCKEE
Four Points News

Officers with the Austin Police Department are ramping up their No Refusal enforcement efforts to reduce the number of drunk drivers on the road this summer.

The number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in Austin in the first quarter of this year was slightly higher compared to the first quarter of 2016. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2017, there were seven fatalities caused by an impaired driver. During the same period in 2016, there were five fatalities caused by an impaired driver.

One positive trend so far this year is that the number of crashes due to DWI is down compared to last year, according to Blake Johnson, operations lieutenant for the Austin Police Department highway enforcement command.

“One trend we’re seeing is both crashes overall and DWI crashes are down, which is a good thing,” Johnson said. “Through the first quarter of the year, DWI crashes were down 23 percent from last year.”

The number of citywide arrests for driving while intoxicated in the first quarter of this year held steady compared to years past.

“DWI arrests are trending about the same,” Johnson said. “(In the first) quarter, they were down 6 percent from last year. Annually, we’re somewhere around the 6,000 mark.”

Between Jan. 1 and April 15, 2017, APD made 1,701 DWI arrests citywide. The three zip codes with the most arrests were 78704 in South Austin with 189, 78701 in downtown with 176 arrests and 78703 in central Austin with 123 arrests.

In the Four Points area, the highest number of DWI arrests made by APD were in the 78726 zip code, which contains the section of RM 620 from Anderson Mill Road to Four Points Drive. In 78726, there were six DWI arrests between Jan. 1 and April 15, 2017. There were 19 DWI arrests total in 2016.

In 78730, there were 2 DWI arrests between Jan. 1 – April 15, 2017. There were six DWIs total in 2016.

Most all of 78732 and part of 78730 are policed by Travis County Sheriff’s Office. TCSO reported eight DWI cases from Jan. 1 through April 15, 2017. There were nine additional DWI cases reported from April 15 – July 2.

Continue reading →

Megan Rondini, shown in August 2014, grew up in Steiner Ranch, graduated from Vandegrift, and attended the University of Alabama on an honors scholarship. She killed herself in 2016 without closure to her long, drawn-out rape case.

By KATIE BAKER
BuzzFeed

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — Megan Rondini’s friends and family remember her as having an ironclad sense of right and wrong. Her childhood nickname was “Rules Rondini” because she was such a principled board game player. As an honors student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Megan offered rides to drunk girls walking alone at night, even after one threw up in her backseat.

No one was there to help Megan — a Vandegrift honors graduate from Steiner Ranch — when she found herself in that very situation one night in July 2015, except for a well-to-do businessman Megan knew only as “Sweet T.” The 34-year-old later told authorities he offered 20-year-old Megan a ride home because he and a friend saw her leaving downtown Tuscaloosa alone. Megan couldn’t remember how she ended up in Sweet T’s white Mercedes on the way to his ornate mansion, decorated with his choicest hunting conquests, from massive-tusked elephant and wide-mouthed hippo heads to taxidermied lions and leopards. But, Megan later told police, she was sober enough by the time he pointed her toward his bedroom to know she didn’t want to have sex with him — and, she said, Sweet T should’ve known it, too.

Continue reading →