I Have Been Arresting Drunk Drivers for 18 Years. Last Month I Had to Arrest My Own Wife.

I have been arresting drunk drivers for 18 years. Last month my own wife killed a 32 year old mother of three. She had two glasses of wine at dinner with friends.

I am writing this because I need to tell someone what I have learned in the six months since.

I need to tell everyone.

My name is Sergeant Brady Wall. I am 47 years old. I have been an Illinois state trooper since I was 28. I worked patrol for the first nine years and DUI enforcement for the last nine. I have been at hundreds of crash scenes. I have made over six hundred DUI arrests in my career.

I thought I had seen all of it.

I had not seen the night my wife I had been with for 21 years killed a woman named Sarah Mitchell.

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My wife's name is Helen.

She is 45 years old. She is a retired elementary school teacher. She taught third grade for 18 years at a public school 12 minutes from our house. She retired three years ago to help take care of her mother who has Alzheimer's.

Helen has never had a parking ticket. She has never had a speeding citation. She has never had a moving violation of any kind. She drives the way the wife of any man drives, which is to say carefully, slowly, and aware that she has things to come home to.

She and I have been together since I was 26 and she was 24. We have two adult sons. The older one is 22. The younger one is 19. They have grown up in a house with a father who has spent 18 years telling them what alcohol does to a body behind a wheel.

Helen has been at every conversation I have ever had with our sons about drinking and driving. She has heard every story I have brought home from a fatal crash. She has been the woman in the passenger seat for every drive home from every dinner we have attended together.

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The dinner was on a Tuesday in March.

Helen's best friend Susan was hosting two other couples at her house. Susan has been Helen's friend since 1998. They taught at the same school for 11 years. Their husbands play golf together. Their kids grew up together.

The dinner started at 6:30 PM. There were six adults. Susan had made pasta. The first bottle of cabernet was opened at 7:15 PM. The second bottle was opened at 9:30 PM. There was a birthday cake at the end because one of the women at the table had turned 50 that week.

Helen had two glasses of wine across four hours and 45 minutes.

I want you to read that sentence again.

Two glasses of wine. Across four hours and forty five minutes.

She drank water in between. She ate a full plate of pasta. She had a piece of birthday cake. She had a cup of coffee at 10:30 PM. She helped Susan clear the table at 10:45 PM. She laughed in Susan's kitchen until 11:08 PM about a story Susan was telling about her son in college.

I called her at 10:47 PM from my patrol vehicle. I told her I loved her. I told her to drive safe.

She said: I will. I am leaving in a few minutes.

She sent me a text at 10:48 PM that said: leaving soon love you 💛

She left Susan's house at 11:24 PM.

She got into her own car. She buckled her seatbelt. She started the engine. She was on the route home she had driven a thousand times before.

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The family I knew

I want to introduce you to Sarah Mitchell.

Sarah was 32 years old. She was an emergency room nurse at the regional hospital 14 miles from my house. She had worked there for 9 years.

I knew Sarah before she died. I have worked traffic accidents in our county for 18 years. I have brought drivers to her emergency room maybe 80 times. She had been one of the nurses who took my own father to a hospital bed in 2019 the night he had his stroke. She had held his hand for 40 minutes in the triage hallway while we waited for a room to open up.

I knew her family too.

Sarah was married to a man named Marcus. They had been together since high school. Marcus is a paramedic. I had ridden in Marcus's ambulance with him on three different DUI calls over the years. We had stood in the same parking lots at 2 AM after the worst nights of our careers. We had drunk the same gas station coffee at 4 AM on the same shifts.

I had been at Marcus and Sarah's house for a Fourth of July barbecue in 2022. They had three children. The oldest was a 14 year old daughter named Olivia. The middle child was a 9 year old son named Ben. The youngest was a 4 year old daughter named Lily. Lily had been two years old at the barbecue. She had fallen asleep in Sarah's lap on the back deck while the men talked.

I had known the family for years.

Sarah had picked Lily up from the babysitter at 10:50 PM that Tuesday. Lily had a 101 degree fever and an ear infection. Sarah had wrapped her in a blanket and put her in the car seat in the back of her Honda. Lily had cried herself to sleep by the time Sarah pulled out of the babysitter's driveway.

Sarah was driving home slowly through the back roads because she did not want to wake Lily up.

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I was on duty that night.

I was 11 minutes from the scene when the call came over my radio. I was the third unit to arrive.

I want to tell you what I saw.

I saw a Honda Civic with the driver's side completely caved in. I saw a second car, a silver sedan, in the ditch on the opposite side of the road with the hood folded back. I saw two ambulances. I saw five paramedics. I saw a woman sitting on the curb with her face in her hands.

I knew the silver sedan before I saw my wife's face.

I had bought Helen that car for her 43rd birthday.

And then I saw the Honda.

I knew the Honda too.

It was Sarah's. I had seen it parked in the hospital lot every shift I had ever been there. I had seen it in the driveway at the Fourth of July barbecue. I had ridden in it once when Marcus and I had taken our sons to a Cubs game in 2021 and Sarah had dropped us at the train station.

I knew whose car I was looking at before any paramedic said a word to me.

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The Arrest

I want to tell you what happened in the next 11 seconds.

I got out of my cruiser. I walked toward the woman on the curb.

I heard a paramedic on my left say the words "she is gone."

I knew which one. I knew because of the Honda.

I heard another paramedic on my right say the words "the child is alive."

I knew which child.

I heard a third paramedic say the words "we need a pediatric team at receiving."

I looked at the woman on the curb.

It was Helen.

She looked up at me. Her face was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. Her eyes were open but she was not seeing me. She was in shock.

I had to be the cop. I could not be the husband yet.

I said: ma'am, I need you to stand up.

She did not move.

I said: Helen, I need you to stand up.

She looked at me then. She said: Brady, what are you doing here.

I said: Helen, I need you to stand up.

I pulled her up by her elbow. I turned her around. I put my hand on the back of her head and I bent her over the hood of her own car.

I put the handcuffs on her wrists.

She said: Brady, what are you doing.

I said: Helen, I am arresting you.

She said: I had two glasses of wine.

I said: Helen.

She said: I had two glasses of wine across four hours. I had not had a drink in over an hour. I was completely fine.

I blew her into my department breathalyzer.

The screen read .11.

She said: that can't be right.

I said: Helen, you killed Sarah Mitchell.

Helen did not understand what I had said for 8 seconds. I watched her face. I watched her eyes register what I had said. I watched her body collapse against her own car.

I had to pick her up and put her in the back of my cruiser.

I did not look at her in the rearview mirror on the way to the station.

I have not been able to look at her in a rearview mirror since.

The Aftermath

Sarah Mitchell was pronounced dead at the hospital at 12:51 AM.

The charge nurse who pronounced her was her best friend. A woman named Diane who had worked with Sarah for 7 years. Diane had to make the call to Marcus.

Marcus was on shift. He took the call in the back of his ambulance at 12:54 AM.

He drove to the hospital. He was still in his uniform. He carried Lily out of the trauma bay an hour later. Lily had a broken arm and a concussion. She would live.

Olivia found out her mother was dead on a Tuesday at 1:14 AM. She had been doing homework at the kitchen table. Marcus called her. He told her on the phone.

Olivia put down her pencil.

She did not pick up another one until October.

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Helen is currently 6 months into an 8 year sentence for vehicular manslaughter.

She is at a state correctional facility two hours from our house. I visit her every other Sunday. We sit across from each other in a visiting room for one hour.

We do not talk about Sarah.

We do not talk about Lily.

We talk about our adult sons. We talk about the weather. We talk about the books Helen is reading in the prison library.

Helen has not had a drink in 6 months. She will not have one again for 7 and a half years. She does not know what she will do when she gets out. She is 45 years old. She will be 53 when she walks out of that facility.

She will spend the rest of her life knowing that two glasses of red wine at her best friend's house killed a 32 year old mother of three.

I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I am the trooper who put her in handcuffs at the scene.

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The woman who saved me

I want to tell you about the woman who saved me from ending it all myself.

Her name is Diane. She is the charge nurse who pronounced Sarah at the hospital.

Diane came to me at Sarah's funeral. I was standing at the back of the church. I had not gone in. I could not let myself sit in a pew at a funeral my wife had caused.

Diane found me at the back of the church. She did not know I was Helen's husband when she walked up to me. She just saw a man in a uniform crying alone.

She asked me if I needed water.

I told her who I was.

She did not flinch.

She told me she did not blame Helen. She told me she blamed the absence of a number. She told me her own sister had been killed by a drunk driver in 2019. She told me her sister had been 28 years old.

She reached into her purse. She pulled out a small black device.

She told me it was called the SoberSense Pro Breathalyzer. She told me she had been carrying one in her purse for two years. She told me it had the same fuel cell sensor that the police breathalyzers use. She told me she had bought 11 of them in two years and given them to every wife of every drunk driver she had worked on in the ER.

She told me Helen was not a monster.

She told me Helen was a woman who did not know what her own number was.

She handed me the device.

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Why the sensor matters

I want to tell you what I learned about the device that took me weeks to understand.

It does not make anyone stop drinking.

That is not what it does. The women at Susan's dinner table all drank wine that night. They are still drinking wine. Two of them have called me to tell me they are still having two glasses of wine at dinner.

The difference is they blow into a device before they get in their cars now.

The device tells them a number.

If the number is under the legal limit, they drive home.

If the number is over the legal limit, they have a decision to make. They can sit in their friend's living room for an hour. They can call a cab. They can call their husband. They can drink water. They can do whatever they want.

But they have a number in front of them. They cannot pretend they do not know what it is.

The number does not let you lie to yourself.

That is the only thing Helen needed at 11:24 PM on a Tuesday in March and did not have.

The SoberSense Pro uses a fuel cell sensor. It is the same sensor the police use on the side of the road. I blew Helen into my department breathalyzer at the scene. The number was .11. Diane gave me a SoberSense Pro three weeks later. I blew Helen's friend Susan into the SoberSense in my own kitchen six weeks after that, after Susan had come over for coffee. Susan had not had a drink that day. The screen read .00.

I tested it against my department breathalyzer the same morning. They were within .002 of each other.

The cheap drugstore breathalyzers do not use this sensor. They use a different one that costs the manufacturer three dollars. It can be off by .03 or .04.

That margin is the difference between Helen and Sarah.

You cannot stake another woman's life on a $20 drugstore device.

The Grocery Store

I want to tell you about a Saturday afternoon in August.

I was at a grocery store on the south side of town. I was picking up steaks for a cookout my younger son was hosting at our house. I came around the corner of the produce aisle and there was a man at the apples.

He had three children with him. A teenage girl. A boy of about ten. A little girl in a stroller.

I knew him before he turned around.

It was Marcus.

He saw me. I saw him.

The teenage girl looked up at her father and asked him a question I could not hear. He answered her quietly. He did not take his eyes off me.

I walked toward him.

I did not plan to. My legs walked me to him.

I stopped a few feet away. I said his name.

He did not say anything.

I said: I am sorry, Marcus.

He said: I know.

I said: I should have given Helen one of these years ago.

He said: I know.

He took his teenage daughter's hand. He pushed the stroller forward. He walked past me to the checkout. I watched him pay for the apples. I watched him load his three children into a minivan in the parking lot.

The teenage girl was buckling the four year old into her car seat. I watched her work the straps the way her mother would have.

I stood in the parking lot until they drove away.

I sat in my own car for 40 minutes before I could drive home.

Helen will be out of prison in 2032. She will be 53. Our sons will be in their 30s. Our grandchildren who are not yet born will be old enough to know that their grandmother spent eight years in a state facility for killing another grandmother.

Olivia Mitchell is 14 now. She is raising her two younger siblings while Marcus works night shifts to keep the family afloat. Olivia goes to a high school 11 miles from her father's house. She drives her brother and her sister to school every morning. She is too young to have a license. The state has given her a hardship permit.

Olivia drives a 4 year old to school every morning who lost her mother before she was old enough to remember her face.

I have a SoberSense Pro in my cruiser. I have one in my personal car. I have given one to every adult woman in my family. I have given one to Helen's best friend Susan. I have given one to the two other women who were at the dinner that night. I have given one to my daughter in law. I have given one to my next door neighbor.

I have not given one to my mother yet. She is 73. She does not drink. I am going to give her one anyway. She will keep it in her car for her granddaughters who visit.

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If you are reading this and you are a woman who has ever had two glasses of wine at a dinner with friends and driven home feeling fine, you have done what Helen did a thousand times before the night she killed Sarah Mitchell.

I want you to read that sentence again.

You have done what Helen did.

The only difference between Helen and you is the woman in the other car.

If you are reading this and you are a man whose wife drives home from dinners with friends, your wife has done what Helen did.

The only difference between your wife and Helen is the woman in the other car.

The number on the screen is the only thing that tells the truth. The feeling is a lie. Every woman who has ever driven home from a dinner with friends and said "I am fine" has been operating on the same lie Helen was operating on at 11:24 PM at her best friend's front door.

The only difference is most of them got home.

I have stood in a lot of driveways and told a lot of families that their loved one did not make it home.

I have arrested my own wife at the scene where another woman's husband had to be told.

I do not want any other husband to stand where Marcus stood at 1 AM at the hospital.

I do not want any other 14 year old to put down her pencil at her kitchen table at 1:14 AM.

I do not want any other mother to be the woman Helen was at 11:24 PM at her best friend's front door.

Please.

Here is where I got mine for whoever is interested:

https://trysobersense.com/products/sobersense-pro-breathalyzer

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