Newly-released bodycam footage has captured the moment former US soccer star Hope Solo was arrested for drink driving after officers found her passed out in her car with her twin toddlers in the back seat.
Solo, the one-time World Cup winner and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was arrested back on 31 March 2022 in a Walmart parking lot in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Officers had been called to a report of a woman asleep at the wheel of her car for more than an hour with the engine running and two small children in the back.
The footage, captured by the bodyworn camera of a Winston-Salem police officer, reveals the disoriented 41-year-old telling officers she was just taking “a nap” and insisting that she hadn’t drank any alcohol.
Minutes later, she was pulled from the car and arrested, with blood alcohol tests revealing she was three times over the legal limit.
In the footage, obtained byQueen City News this week, an officer is seen arriving at the parking lot to find the engine of Solo’s black GMC Yukon running and her behind the wheel.
The officer approaches the driver’s side of the car and knocks on the window, appearing to startle the 41-year-old.
“Oh, my God,” she says.
The officer asks if she is “okay” saying that “people were kind of concerned you guys were out here sleeping and want to make sure you were okay”.
“What’s going on? Why are you sleeping in a parking lot?” he asks.
Solo, who appears disorientated, responds: “Um, because I took a nap”.
The officer asks her to turn off the engine to which she complies.
When the officer asks her how much alcohol she has drank, she insists “I have not”.
She adds: “I’m perfectly fine, thank you sir.”
“Zero alcohol?” the officer asks, to which she confirms yes.
The officer asks for her identification.
But, instead of handing it over, Solo is seen taking a phone call and telling the person on the other end that there is a police officer with her and that she had been sleeping because she was “so f***ing tired from driving”.
“I was just trying to take a nap because I’m so f***ing tired from driving. Yeah, I, I mean, I pulled over in a Walmart parking lot to take a nap. I have no idea why he’s here, but hang on,” Solo says on the call.
During the several-minute encounter, Solo continues to deny she has been drinking and insists that she was only “taking a nap”.
A second officer arrives on the scene and the first relays to his colleague that “she’s drunk and she’s got two kids”.
“She’s completely oblivious to everything that’s like going on right now,” he says, adding that he can smell the alcohol on the mother-of-two.
While the first officer then goes to run her plates, the second officer repeatedly asks Solo to step out of the vehicle – while her children begin crying in the back seat.
When Solo fails to comply with the officers’ orders to step out of the car, the officer pulls her from the vehicle and places her under arrest.
Solo refused to take a sobriety test, with law enforcement instead obtaining a warrant for a blood test.
She was found to have a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.24 percent – three times the legal limit – and also tested positive for THC.
She was charged with driving while impaired (DWI), child abuse and resisting arrest.
She entered a rehabilitation facility and postponed her induction ceremony into the Hall of Fame, saying she had made the request so she could “address my challenges with alcohol”.
In July, she pleaded guilty to the DWI charge in exchange for the other two charges being dropped.
The mother-of-two has since described the incident as the “worst mistake of my life”.
“I underestimated what a destructive part of my life alcohol had become,” she said in an Instagram post.
“I made a huge mistake. Easily the worst mistake of my life.”
Solo made more than 200 appearances as goalkeeper for the US women’s national soccer team, taking home gold medals as part of the Olympics team in both 2008 and 2012.
In 2015, she was then part of the team that claimed victory in the World Cup.
