According to Mail Online
A college student who was buying sparkling water, ice cream and cookie dough for a sorority fundraiser spent a night in jail after authorities mistook the bottles for a 12-pack of beer.
Elizabeth Daly, a 20-year-old University of Virginia student, said she was ‘terrified’ when a group of plainclothes state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents approached her car in the dark.
Having just attended an evening vigil on campus where women shared stories of their experiences with sexual assault, Miss Daly, who was with her college roommate, said she ‘panicked’ when she saw the men and drove off, before being arrested and charged with three felonies.
‘They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,’ Miss Daly, 20 recalled last week in a written account of the April 11 incident.
‘I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car, they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car.
They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,’ she explained.
Police say one of the agents, who had mistaken Miss Daly’s purchase of LaCroix sparkling water from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center, for a pack of beer, jumped on the hood of her car. Miss Daly claims that one drew a gun.
After fleeing the parking lot in the SUV and ‘grazing’ two of the plainclothes officers, Miss Daly said she called 911 to report the attack, and also confirm the identities of the officers.
Another Alcoholic Beverage Control agent in a police vehicle pulled over the car, where Miss Daly was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.
Charges have since been dropped against the student, with Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman telling The Daily Progess that ‘it wouldn’t be right’ to prosecute the case.
The case is currently under review by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Bureau of Law Enforcement,
a state-run agency whose mission is to safely and responsibly administer the sale and consumption of alcohol.
‘This has been an extremely trying experience,’ said Miss Daly. ‘It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point.’
Maybe the police were trying to meet a quota…we smell a lawsuit.
