SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — A 72-year-old Arlington man is sitting in jail, accused of trying to bribe his way out of a DUI.
Deputies said Thomas Watson tried to write them a check after testing him almost two-and-a-half times over the legal limit, but it didn’t go as planned. Deputies didn’t budge, telling him, “That’s not how things work.”
Now he’s facing charges of driving under the influence and bribery of a public servant charges.
Deputies said they found Watson in his car on Brunswick Road, just a couple of miles from his home, stuck in a ditch early Sunday morning.
“He clearly had slurred speech, unstable on his feet, and smelled of alcohol,” Chip Washington with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said.
Investigators took him to Bolton High’s parking lot, where they gave him some simple sobriety tests like walking in a straight line.
He failed them all.
It wasn’t until Watson failed his breathalyzer test that he tried to pull out his checkbook.
According to the affidavit, he asked the deputy, “What’s it going to take to change the numbers on your little machine there?”
“The discussion continued, and basically, the deputy did what he was supposed to,” Washington said.
Watson is now in jail on a $15,000 bond.
His car was seized too, because deputies said this is the third time he’s been caught drinking and driving.
“He was 72 years old? Definitely should have known better,” Mark Jarvis of Arlington said.
Should have known better, because Brunswick isn’t a road easily traveled.
“A lot of curves. No sidewalks. Ditches. It is not a road you want to be walking on,” Shetland Malone of Arlington said. “Let alone driving drunk.”
Some say you get wiser with age, but now folks in Arlington tend to disagree.
“No. The law is the law. You can’t do that,” Jarvis said.
According to court records, deputies recorded Sunday’s incident, and it will be used as evidence when Watson is expected to appear in court January 21.
Watson was last charged with a DUI in 2010.