It’s never easy for a parent to call the police on their own children, but sometimes it’s one of the only ways to make sure they are safe from harm. That’s what one mother decided to do after she discovered that her adult son was posting videos and livestreams on YouTube of him allegedly driving drunk. That led officers in Florida to perform a welfare check on the man, though what they found was something serious.
37-year-old man caught allegedly streaming on YouTube while driving drunk
On August 23 at around 2:30 p.m., officers from the Vero Beach Police Department responded to a call concerning 37-year-old Thomas Leininger after his mother called police after watching disturbing videos that he has posted on YouTube, according to a report by Law&Crime Network.
An incident report said Leininger’s mother had seen her son “posting videos on his YouTube channel making threats and appeared to be highly intoxicated.” Officers searched Riverside Park for Leininger’s vehicle, a silver Chevrolet Tahoe, but did not find a car matching that description. Later, an officer was at an intersection when a silver Tahoe with a South Carolina license plate was observed making an “illegal U-turn,” prompting the office to follow the vehicle into a nearby Mobil gas station.
Bodycam footage reveals Leininger wearing a black camo shirt and black pants. He admitted that he “only had a few shots,” but the officer noticed that “he was swaying back and forth, had red glossy eyes, and had a strong odor of alcohol.”
The man is seen having trouble following the conversation, though he eventually accepted to perform various field sobriety tests. That didn’t go well for him, as it took nearly 15 minutes for him to perform and fail all three tests, prompting one of the officers to place him in handcuffs.
After being taken to jail, he amended his earlier statement and confessed that he had been “taking shots all day long.” A pair of breathalyzer tests would support this, as he blew a 0.151 and a 0.154. That’s nearly twice the blood alcohol concentration limit of 0.08 for a DUI in Florida.
Leininger was cited for driving under the influence and posted a $1,000 cash bond on August 30, according to booking information. He later pleaded no contest to the charge on September 15.
