Grandmother avoids prison time
Tot in car seat was dangling out of truck
A woman charged with child abuse, drunken driving gets probation.
A grandmother charged with child abuse after she hopped in her daughter’s truck and drunkenly drove off — despite the fact that her infant granddaughter was in a car seat dangling from an open rear door — was sentenced to three years of supervised probation Monday after she pleaded no contest to the abuse charge and guilty to DWI, her second.
The incident occurred in July after Bertha Boling went to her adult daughter’s home near Paseo del Sol and Jaguar Drive and asked for a ride home because she was too intoxicated to drive, according to police.
Boling’s daughter agreed to drive her mother home, according to a police report, and strapped her 9-month-old baby girl in her car seat in the back of the vehicle. But the two women then argued and the daughter decided against giving her mother a ride.
Boling, 65, got in the truck anyway and began to drive away as her daughter tried to remove the child’s car seat from the vehicle. The baby’s mother tried to hold on to the car seat and was dragged a short distance before falling to the ground, leaving her daughter’s car seat, which had gotten tangled in a seatbelt, dangling from the rear door of the moving vehicle.
Boling didn’t drive far before bystanders blocked her path with their own vehicles, at which point the child’s father removed the infant unharmed from the truck.
When police asked Boling for her driver’s license, she handed them a credit card instead, according to police. An arrest statement said that Boling’s blood-alcohol level was .22 percent at the time — more than twice the legal limit
for operating a motor vehicle in New Mexico.
Boling has been arrested three times since 2014 on suspicion of battery against a household member, according to court records, but was never convicted. She pleaded guilty last year to a petty misdemeanor of disorderly conduct, records show.
She pleaded no contest to drunken driving in 2009 and was sentenced to community service and a year of probation.
Boling said very little during her plea hearing Monday.
When invited by District Judge T. Glenn Ellington to make a statement before being sentenced, Boling mumbled: “I will do everything I have to do. I’ve been doing it and I’m sorry. I will continue doing everything I’m supposed to do.”
Assistant District Attorney Ihsan Ahmed said during the hearing that Boling had already served the 96 consecutive hours of jail time that is mandatory for second-time DWI offenders. Jail records show she spent about nine days in jail following her arrest.
Had she not taken a plea deal, Boling would have faced up to four years in jail if convicted on the charges.
If Boling completes her probation without violations, she will be eligible to petition the court for a conditional discharge on the child abuse charge, which would be removed from her record as a conviction.