Chapel Hill Town Council member Lee Storrow entered a guilty plea on a DWI charge in Orange County Court on Thursday morning.
Storrow was arrested last Wednesday, August 26, around 1:20 in the morning, after his 2012 Toyota Prius was clocked going 63 in a 35 mile per hour zone on Martin Luther King Junior Blvd, according to police records.
Assistant District Attorney Jeff Nieman told Judge Lunsford Long the officer in the incident described smelling an “overpowering odor” of alcohol after stopping Storrow, and that the councilman refused all field sobriety tests. Storrow was arrested and registered a .16 blood alcohol content after submitting to a chemical analysis; the legal limit to drive in North Carolina is .08.
Nieman said, as part of an agreement for Storrow’s guilty plea to DWI, the prosecution would not challenge a dismissal of the speeding charge.
After the hearing, Storrow said he has spent the days since his arrest contemplating his actions and his future.
“The last week has been a really deep one for reflection for me,” he says. “And I think this was one step, of many, that I have toward taking responsibility for my really truly awful wrong decision.”
Storrow’s attorney – Bill Massengale – told Judge Long that Storrow would be attending an alcohol assessment course before his sentencing hearing on November 17.
The 26-year-old Storrow was first voted onto the Town Council in 2011 and is running for a second term in this November’s election.
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