Mother of 11, Tasha Lynn Schleicher, was arrested for her seventh DUI arrest in what could have been a potentially explosive one.
Schleicher, 41, of New Hope, Minnesota, was taken in custody in Riverside, Illinois, in what the police chief called “one of the worst DUI offenders in the United States,” after being caught trying to fill her gas tank with kerosene instead of gasoline, which can cause a car’s engine to smoke, or even explode.
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Her six prior DUI arrests came out of Kentucky in 2007, Wisconsin in 2008, Indiana in June 2016, California in November 2016, Oregon in April 2017 and Minnesota in October 2017.
The five children present during that arrest were once again taken into protective custody.
A 911 caller reported a woman passed out behind the wheel in a gas station parking lot on South Harlem Avenue around 9:30 p.m., but when police arrived, they found Tasha Lynn Schleicher, 41, awake and alert, with her keys in her ignition and the car’s engine running, according to the release. According to a tweet from the Riverside Police Department, the arresting officers found a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey open in Schleicher’s front passenger seat. Schleicher, a resident of New Hope, Minn., could not tell officers why she was in Illinois, insisting that she could not find her 11 children.
According a police press release, Schleicher has 11 prior arrests, six of which are for driving under the influence, but all of which are DUI-related. For her latest arrest in Riverside, Ill., for instance, the mother of 11 has been charged with two counts of felony aggravated drunken driving, two counts of misdemeanor drunk driving, driving without insurance, driving while license revoked (for DUI) and transportation of open alcohol container while driving. source
According to local press, all of those children had at different points been taken from her care, in child custody actions spread over several states, and all related to previous drunken driving offenses, but they were all returned to her in August 2017.
Schleicher also had warrants out in three states at the time of her latest arrest: in Nebraska for violation of a court order, and in Idaho and Oregon for failure to appear for prior drink driving charges.