Driving While Intoxicated Case Law Update - Texas District ...

anyone other than officer to help him, and officer's belief that defendant needed help was
objectively reasonable.
Mu noz v. State,, 201 0 W L 330 4242 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 201 0).
Where defendant was obserued traveting at almost hatf the posted speed limit, and putling into the
parking lot of closed busrness alone in her car and absent the officer had no access fo asslsfance,
it was a proper community caretaking sfop. Police officer's sfop of defendant's vehicle to determine
if she was /osf was reasonable exercrse of his community caretaking function. Even though the
fourth factor, whether she posed a danger to herself or others ffnof assisfed, weighs against the
application of the community caretaking function, "not all factors must support the application of
the exception in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in exercising his community
caretaking funciton."
Chilman v. State, 22 S.W:3d 50 (Tex. App.-Houston [14th Dist] 2000, pet. ref'd.).
Around 2:00 a.m., the officer observed a red car stopped in front of a banicade erected to block
campus entrance. The officer did not know when the red car had pulled up to the banicade
although he knew the car was not there when he passed by the same spot twenty minutes earlier.
Officerobseruedthe passenger/eavethe red car and surueythe barricadetothe campusentrance.
ln an effort to determine what the car's occupants were doing on campus and possibly to provide
some assr.sfance because they appeared to be lost, officer turned on his patrol car's emergency
equipment. This action prompted fhe passenger to jump back into the red car. When the officer
approached, the Defendant who was in the driver's seat, asked the officer why he had stopped him
and declared that there was no reason to stop him. After determining the Defendant was
intoxicated, the officer arrested him for DWI. Stop held to be justified.
Hulit v. State, 982 S.W.2d 431(Tex. Crim. App. 1998).
Police were dispatched rn response to a report of a "woman possibly having a heart attack in a
vehicle." Officer found a pickup truck sitting in the inside lane of a seruice road about fifty feet from
an intersection and saw an individual slumped over the steering wheel of the truck. The truck
engine was still running and the windows were rolled up. The officer approached the vehicle and
began rapping on the window and yelling at the driver to wake up. With the assrsfance of a second
officer, the driver awakened and opened the door of the pickup. The testifying officer smelled
alcohol about the driver. Once the driver got out of the truck at the officer's request, the truck began
rolling bacl