A Florida mom was clocked at 91 mph. Her unrestrained toddlers were along for the ride
A Florida mom felt the need for speed, and now she’s in jail.
According to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, Carolyn Poitier was arrested just after midnight Tuesday, accused of going 91 mph in a 50 mph zone in DeLand.
Poitier, 25, wasn’t alone. Her two children — a 3-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy — were in the vehicle as well, sleeping and unrestrained in the front passenger seat and back seat, respectively. Pictures show them still sound asleep after the traffic stop.
According to the sheriff’s office, deputies clocked her car on International Speedway Boulevard as she was on the way to “pick up her boyfriend.”
The driver, who was traveling from Leesburg to Daytona Beach, told cops she left the children’s car seats in another vehicle at home because she didn’t want to wake them by strapping them in.
Deputies told Poitier, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, that if she had crashed at that speed, they all would have been killed.
“She stated she didn’t plan on getting into a crash,” according to the sheriff’s post.
During the deputies’ search of the vehicle, Tramadol pain reliever pills were found in the center console. Besides a charge of child neglect and citations for speeding, careless driving and three seat-belt violations, Poitier was slapped with an additional possession charge of a schedule 4 substance.
The Florida mom was taken to the Volusia County Branch Jail on $5,000 bond. Another adult arrived with car seats to take the children safely home.
The agency ends the post with a warning to others: Florida law requires children age 5 and under to be secured properly in a crash-tested, federally approved child restraint device.
According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, no one under 13 should ride in the front seat, even in a restraint.
“Whether they were in the front seat or the back seat — they were both just laying on the seat,” Cher Philio, spokeswoman for Safe Kids Volusia and Flagler counties, told Click Orlando. “The weight of the child times the speed equals the crash force that would be needed to hold that child from moving out of place.”
