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Patchogue resident Maria Carballo, age 29, was stopped shortly after midnight on Saturday, March 19 by deputies from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office for failing to maintain her lane on North Ocean Avenue, south of the Long Island Expressway.
During the subsequent stop in Patchogue, it was determined that Carballo was allegedly intoxicated, and in the back of her vehicle, there was a 10-month-old infant in a car seat.
Police said that Carballo was arrested for driving while intoxicated under Leandra’s Law for having a child in the car, and endangering the welfare of the child.
Investigators noted that Carballo consented to a drug test, the results of which are pending from the Crime Lab. The infant was released into the custody of his father, while the vehicle Carballo was driving was impounded as evidence.
Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, Jr. said that “Leandra’s Law (the Child Passenger Protection Act) is a NYS law making it an automatic felony on the first offense to drive drunk with a person age 15 or younger inside the vehicle.”
It was named after 11-year-old Leandra Rosado who was killed on the Henry Hudson Parkway on Oct. 11, 2009, when she was the passenger in a car accident, driven by a driver who was allegedly driving while intoxicated.
“Suffolk County Deputy Sheriffs are out patrolling our county’s roads to keep the public safe,” Toulon said in a statement announcing the arrest. “In this case, they not only prevented an intoxicated driver from causing an accident with another driver or a pedestrian, but they potentially saved the life of an infant in the vehicle.”
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