Deputy: Driver mixing drugs and alcohol charged with child abuse

<p>A woman accused of driving with a preschooler beside her after she allegedly drank alcohol and took prescription drugs was arrested on a child abuse charge Tuesday evening.</p><p>Jamie Lynn Howard, 26, was charged with cruelty toward a child/abuse without great harm, three counts of possession of controlled substances without a prescription, and trafficking in opium or an opium derivative.</p><p>Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Glenn Jones pulled Howard over after the Sheriff’s Office received several calls about a white van being driven recklessly northwest of Gainesville and running other drivers off the road.</p><p>One witness said the van nearly hit several oncoming vehicles and the driver could be seen drinking an unidentified beverage. Another witness told dispatchers that he saw the van stopped at a green light and thought it had broken down, then watched as it hit a curb four times in a short distance before speeding and driving in the oncoming traffic lanes.</p><p>Jones found a 3-year-old boy sleeping in the front passenger seat. Also inside the van, the deputy found a partially empty beer can with a lipstick mark around the opening that matched the shade of a lipstick tube in Howard’s purse. Howard claimed her sister wore the same shade of lipstick.</p><p>Also inside the van deputies said they found multiple types of pills that appeared to be prescription drugs. Two types of pills were in containers from pharmacies that identified them as Howard’s prescriptions. Both of the prescriptions had cautions on the labels warning that alcohol could intensify their effects.</p><p>Howard allegedly told deputies that other pills they found in the van had been given to her by friends and family members because her own doctors had given her bad pills. Jones said Howard also told him that she had prescriptions for most of the types of pills found in the van, but was not carrying them in their original prescription bottles because they would take up all of the room in her purse.</p><p>Jones wrote in the arrest report that he did not arrest Howard for DUI because she was able to complete field sobriety tests and did not appear to be impaired enough to be charged with DUI.</p><p>“I believe her erratic behavior was caused by her emotional state,” Jones wrote. Howard told deputies that her father died several weeks ago.</p><p>Howard’s son was turned over to relatives, and Howard was booked into the Alachua County Jail.</p>