Affidavit: Off-duty officer charged with DWI said he drank 2 beers, 2 tequila shots
The off-duty El Paso Police officer charged with DWI allegedly told officers who responded to the wreck that he drank two beers and two tequila shots in the hours before he crashed while looking down at his cell phone, a criminal complaint states.
Thomas Sneed, 38, was driving a Dodge Ram pickup north on Piedras when he allegedly struck a parked Mazda 3 on the 2300 block of N. Piedras, police said. The location of the wreck is about a mile away from El Paso Police headquarters. Two occupants in the Mazda 3, identified by police as 34-year-old Israel Gallegos and 33-year-old Joseph Peterson, were not hurt.
A fellow police officer riding in Sneed’s pickup, identified by police as 34-year-old Andrea Zendejas, was transported to an area hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Zendejas was featured prominently on episodes of the Lifetime series “Live PD.”
The officers investigating the wreck said Sneed told them Zendejas called him and asked him to go out so he accompanied her to Duets at about 9:45 p.m. Afterwards, the criminal complaint states, Zendejas asked Sneed to take her to her car, but Sneed told her he would instead drive her to her friend’s house, drop her off and then head home.
The criminal complaint states that as Sneed was driving north on Piedras, his phone rang and he looked down at it. When Sneed looked back up, he saw the Mazda right in front of him, the document adds. The wreck was reported at 2:32 a.m., police said.
After crashing into the car, Sneed exited his pickup to check on the car’s occupants. When he walked back to his pickup, he noticed Zendejas’ face covered with blood. The criminal complaint states Zendejas’ head hit the pickup’s windshield and Zendejas “began to panic” after the wreck. Sneed stood by Zendejas’s side while paramedics arrived at the scene to treat her injuries, the court document states.
The police officers who initially responded to the scene of the wreck said they noticed Sneed had red, blood-shot eyes, slurred speech, swayed balance and the odor of alcohol eminating from his breath, the criminal complaint states. Sneed allegedly told the responding officers he drank two beers and two tequila shots at Duet’s, a nearby bar on Montana Avenue.
Sneed voluntarily agreed to a series of field sobriety tests and the police officer observed six out of six clues during the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test, and one out of eight clues in the walk-and-turn test, a criminal compaint states. Following the tests, the officer told Sneed he was under arrest for DWI and asked Sneed to provide a breath sample. Sneed allegedly agreed and the results for the test were .075 and .074, the court document states.
Police said Sneed is a two-and-a-half year veteran of the El Paso Police Department. He has been placed on administrative duties while an administrative investigation is conducted.
