Boulder police officers say they helped a man on Sunday download the Uber app onto his phone, called him an Uber, and he still walked to his car and proceeded to earn a DUI right in front of them.
Boulder Police responded to a call from the St. Julien Hotel at 901 Canyon Boulevard on May 20 to assist a man suspected of having a few too many. Hotel employees alerted the authorities when they came to believe the man would attempt to drive himself home. And, according to police officers, despite all of their efforts at the scene, that is precisely what he attempted to do.
The “visibly intoxicated” 37-year-old Justin Torkildsen was reportedly already swaying on his feet when he promised the officers that he would take an Uber home. The story might have been easier to believe if he had the Uber app on his phone. But police even assisted him there, helping him download, set up an account, and call for a ride.
Torkildsen then got into the Uber and rode it right to the parking garage to get his car. Officers found him “hanging out of the window of the Uber pushing buttons on his key fob to try to locate his vehicle.” Then Torkildsen “rapidly accelerated out of the parking spot and began squealing the car’s tires as he drove rapidly through the parking garage and the wrong way up one of the entrance ramps,” allegedly right in front of the cops.
He was arrested for suspicion of DUI and reckless driving. Despite claiming to only have had four “fruit punch-type drinks” that night, his blood-alcohol level was .226 when it was tested at the jail. The legal limit in Colorado is .08.