Police: Nanny crashed with infant in car while under influence
BOCA RATON — A nanny was impaired when she crashed her car Tuesday with her 11-month-old charge in the back in an improperly installed child seat, Boca Raton police said.
At about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Elyse Nicole Tilley, 27, of Boynton Beach, was driving her red Nissan Versa southbound on North Dixie Highway a block north of Palmetto Park Road, when she changed lanes and rearended a black Hyundai Santa Fe, a city police report said.
Arriving police found the child in the back. The infant was treated for minor head bruises at West Boca Regional Medical Center, the report said. No one else was hurt.
The report does not identify either the child or the child’s family.
The arriving officer said Tilley “seemed impaired on some type of medication” and “twitching crying scratching and appeared to be anxious.” He said Tilley “displayed a drunk-like behavior and she was uncoordinated” and that she was “extremely restless.”
The officer said Tilley told him she takes lorazapam, marketed as the anti-anxiety drug Ativan, and that she told him she’d taken one clonazepam and one buspar, two other anti-anxiety drugs, earlier that day. The officer also reported seeing pills on her front passenger seat.
Tilley, the report continues, then took a field sobriety test and later submitted to a blood test and a urine draw. It said police found bottles containing prescription drugs on her front seat. She said one, which carried a different name on the label, belonged to a roommate and that she didn’t know it was in the car, but admitted the others were hers.
Tilley was booked Tuesday night into the Palm Beach County Jail, charged with neglecting a child without great harm, DUI and three counts of possessing a controlled substance without a prescription. She was released early Wednesday after posting $12,000 bond, documents show.
Tilley, reached Thursday morning at her home, referred comment to her attorney, who did not respond Thursday.
Tilley has no previous arrests, Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show.