Woman Who Already Had 11 Kids Taken From Her Arrested Again For DUI
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Minnesota mother of 11 children is being called one of the worst drunken driving offenders in the nation after a recent arrest in Illinois.
On Monday, police in Riverside, Illinois arrested 41-year-old Tasha Schleicher, of New Hope, at a gas station. Police say she was highly intoxicated and attempting to fill her car with kerosene, not gasoline.
Officers also spotted an open bottle of liquor in her front passenger seat, which witnesses said she was drinking from before police arrived.
According to police, before being taken into custody, she told officers that she had 11 children and couldn't find them. Police searched, but could not find any children belonging to her and later found out that all 11 of her children were taken from her due to prior conviction in Minnesota. That's when she was accused of driving drunkenly with five children – and of breastfeeding one of her children while drunk.
Related: Charges: Woman Drove Drunk With 5 Kids In Car
Schleicher was arrested after refusing to perform a field sobriety testing.
When she was fingerprinted, it revealed that she has a revoked driver's license and that she has outstanding warrants from three states.
Police say that while she was in custody, Scheicher told police that she was pregnant, bleeding and having a miscarriage. So, police took her to a local hospital for treatment, but hospital staff determined her statement was fictitious, and that she wasn't pregnant.
"She has been combative with officers the entire process thus far. She's lied about her name, date of birth, Social Security number and even that she was pregnant, leaving officers no choice but to take her to emergency room for treatment for something completely fictitious. I believe her trip to the hospital was really an attempt by her to escape custody," Riverside Police Chief Tom Wietzel said.
Wietzel said that she said she was in Riverside because she was dropping off her only child that she still has, a 15-year-old son, so he could "party" in Indiana over spring break. He says it's believed that she illegally took him out of protective custody in order to do this.
Police confirmed she dropped him off somewhere in Cleveland, Indiana.
"We're working on locating that child, but so far haven't been successful because she's not cooperative. We're dealing with Minnesota Child Protective Services and other social agencies to try to get a lead on the 15-year-old in Indiana," Wietzel added.
Wietzel said she's one of the worst DUI offenders his police department has had to deal with, and added that he's "classified her as one of the worst DUI offenders in the United States."
Schneider has 11 prior arrests, all DUI-related, in multiple states that include Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, California and Oregon. She has been convicted six times. Police say she uses many different names, dates of birth and has used nine separate social security numbers.
Wietzel personally called the Cook County States Attorney's Office in Illinois to tell them of her arrest and said not only should she be held in custody, but that she absolutely needed immediate social service intervention and professional medical attention for severe alcohol abuse.
Scheicher is charged with two counts of felony aggravated drunk driving, two counts of misdemeanor drunk driving, no vehicle insurance, driving while license revoked (for DUI) and transportation of open alcohol while driving.