Stroke Victim Arrested For DUI Gets $500,000 From California City

A California city paid a woman $500,000 after police wrongly arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence when she had actually suffered a stroke.

Robin Winger, 43, was driving her 15-year-old daughter to school in Garden Grove, about 34 miles south of Los Angeles, on Oct. 31, 2011, when she clipped the mirror of a parked vehicle and appeared confused and incoherent after the traffic stop, the Orange County Register reported.

According to her attorney, Jerry Steering, a police officer turned on his lights and tried to pull Winger over, but she didn’t notice the lights. When the officer turned on his siren, the woman pulled over “in a jerking manner.”

Winger’s daughter told police that her mother didn’t feel well and that there was something wrong with her, the lawyer added.

A field sobriety test was done on Winger. She was also examined by a police drug recognition expert before she was booked on a DUI charge at the city jail, which was operated by private vendor the Geo Group, the Associated Press reported.

Winger was unable to spell her first name or recall her last name at the time. She was also unable to answer basic questions, such as where she lived, according to a memorandum filed March 2020 in Winger’s appeal.

At the time, Winger tried to explain multiple times to police that she was not feeling well and that she had spent time in the hospital recently, the memo said.

A doctor who later treated Winger said the woman's inability to state her last name should have been seen as a symptom of a stroke rather than intoxication. The officers who booked Winger had previously received training on how to identify signs of a stroke, the memo said.

Firefighters who were at the scene believed that the woman should have been taken to the hospital. They testified that they encouraged her to go, but Winger was allegedly resistant.

Winger was only able to go to a hospital after she was released from jail, and she was confirmed to have suffered a stroke, KNX News Radio reported. The DUI charges against the woman were dropped in 2014.

Winger sued the city of Garden Grove and Geo Group in federal court in 2013. The Geo Group settled with Winger for $300,000 in 2015, and the city settled for $500,000 this year.