Posted by:
mustbeanonforthis
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Date: May 01, 2015 01:10AM
Our next door neighbors are a retired couple with adult children and many grandchildren. I'll call them Larry and Helen. When we moved next to them nearly a decade ago, Larry was a counselor in the bishopric. We were told by his daughter that he'd been inactive for a long time, and that he'd recently made some big changes in his life and decided to go back to church. The biggest change was that he'd stopped drinking after being quite a heavy drinker for many years. They were all very happy and proud of him. However, about a year ago this same daughter told us that he actually still drinks sometimes, but she didn't make it sound like it was a big issue (as a side note, we have not been to church in many years but they remain active).
Six months ago, there was a police car in front of their house. We saw Larry walk out with a cop on each side of him. He was placed in the back seat of the cruiser and they drove away. My husband is friends with Larry and Helen's son (we'll call him Rob), who has lived with them on and off over the years. After we saw Larry being taken away by the police, he texted Rob to see if everything was okay. Rob said that that Larry had been drinking, and that he'd hit a car in a parking lot and left the scene. Someone saw this happen and called the police with Larry's license plate number. Rob said it was probably going to be a DUI.
We didn't hear anything else from Rob about it after that, and didn't feel it was our place to ask any more questions. We didn't see Larry for a couple of weeks afterwards.
When we did see him again, he was driving his car like nothing had happened. I thought people's licenses get revoked when they get a DUI? This perplexed me, so I went to the website Utah's Right to Know to see if he'd actually gotten one, but there was nothing under his name. It should also be noted that a month or so after this happened, my husband saw him at the liquor store buying 1/5 of some type of hard liquor.
The reason for this post is that something happened today that has me extremely concerned. I was in my front yard doing yard work, and Larry came out and chatted with me for a couple minutes. There was nothing unusual about his behavior at that time. He returned about 30-40 minutes later, and I was still in the front yard working. He parked in his driveway and got out of the car. I glanced over at him, and he was leaning against the car with his arms up a little bit, his head resting against his hands. He was also swaying, like it was difficult to balance himself. He stopped swaying, and stood still for a minute, then started swaying again. He did this for about 2 minutes, alternating between swaying and standing still. It was very odd, and he didn't seemed to be concerned or even aware that I was watching him. He then grabbed the side view mirror to steady himself, and took a few wobbly, unbalanced steps. He stopped to steady himself again, looked around with a very out-of-it expression on his face, and walked into his garage unsteadily until I could no longer see him.
My impression after seeing this is that he acted and looked drunk. In fact, he seemed pretty wasted. There's a possibility that he was feeling ill for some some reason, but I know what a drunk person looks like. Also, given his history and the fact that he seemed absolutely fine when I spoke to him 30 minutes prior, my best guess is that he'd made a visit to the liquor store.
About 20 minutes after he staggered into his house, Rob's 6-year-old son walked out with his backpack on (Rob and his family are living with them right now). One minute later, Larry followed him out. He had sunglasses on and was chewing gum, and seemed to find his balance a lot easier than he'd been able to only 20 minutes earlier. They got in his car, and off they went. I'm assuming he took him to the neighborhood school, because he returned 5 minutes later. This time he pulled into his garage and shut the door so I couldn't see him get out.
My son plays outside quite a bit, riding his bike and what not, as do the other kids who live on our cul-de-sac. Larry drives frequently, often leaving his house and returning shortly thereafter a couple times a day, much like he did this morning. It's VERY alarming to me to think he may be driving drunk regularly.
So now, we're trying to decide what to do. If he's drinking and driving, not only is he endangering our son and the other kids on our street, and everyone else on the roads, he's also putting his own grandkids in danger if he drives them places when he's drunk. I also wonder how the hell did he didn't get a DUI with the incident 6 months ago, or if he did, why it's not listed on Utah's Right to Know? Is there any other way I can find out if he got a DUI?
At this point, we're thinking the best thing to do is to tell Rob what we saw, because we'd want to know about that type of erratic behavior of anyone driving our child around. Do they know if he's drinking again? If so, how can they seem to be okay with him driving regularly? We feel like something needs to be done, but we're not quite sure what it should be or how to go about it.
If you were me, how would you feel about what I saw and knowing what I know? What would you do?