, , , , ,

Lawmakers Seek To Strengthen Wisconsin’s Drunken Driving Laws

First OWI Could Be Criminalized

By
car driving at night
S. Maslo (CC BY-NC-ND)

Jennifer Kilburn drove north on 60th Avenue in Kenosha just before 5 a.m. on Aug. 9, 2018, to start her shift as a nurse at Aurora Medical Center.

As she turned left onto Highway 50, Jesse Liddell flew through a red light, T-boning Kilburn’s silver Honda on the driver’s side.

Kilburn was taken by Flight for Life — an emergency medical air transport — to Milwaukee. Her pelvis was shattered. Her lung was collapsed. Her diaphragm had ruptured.

Stay informed on the latest news

Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The crash was on a Thursday. Kilburn remained unconscious until Saturday.

Honda after it was hit by a drunken driver
Jennifer Kilburn’s Honda after it was hit by a drunken driver on the morning of Aug. 9, 2018. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Kilburn

“They told me that I had been in a car accident and that a drunken driver had hit me,” she said. “And that not only was it a drunken driver, but he had actually been arrested two hours prior for drunken driving.”

After failing a field sobriety test at the scene of the crash, Liddell was arrested. It was his second arrest in less than three hours. Around 2:20 a.m., Pleasant Prairie police arrested Liddell for his first-ever OWI.