Plastered Jaguar Driver Offered Novel Excuse

DECEMBER 13--After being chased down by police, a drunken Florida motorist who was driving in excess of 100 miles per hour apologized and explained to officers, “I was just showing my cousin how fast my Jaguar could go.”

According to an arrest affidavit, a sheriff’s deputy spotted a silver Jaguar speeding on a Vero Beach roadway around 2 AM today. After an Indian River County Sheriff’s Office  deputy chased the vehicle at “speeds of one hundred miles per hour,” the driver pulled over.

When the deputy confronted driver Robert McCarron, 26, he “immediately stated, ‘I’m sorry. I was just showing my cousin how fast my Jaguar could go.” McCarron, whose relative was in the front passenger seat, added, “I was just being an idiot.”

McCarron told a deputy that he had engaged the car’s sport mode and “told his cousin to check this out, so that he could show him what he could do with the car.”

McCarron, seen in the above mug shot, mumbled, smelled of booze, and had “red, glassy, and bloodshot” eyes, a deputy noted. McCarron, who subsequently failed a series of field sobriety tests, took a pair of Breathalyzer tests that showed his blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit.

In advance of his sister’s wedding, McCarron said he had been drinking from 2 PM to 11 PM Thursday and “admitted to drinking Bud Light, a Bloody Mary, a whiskey ginger, and then drank more Bud Lights.”

Charged with driving under the influence and racing on a highway, McCarron was booked into the county jail on the misdemeanor counts. He was released this morning after posting bond and is scheduled for a January 7 Circuit Court appearance. (3 pages)