A 24-year-old Florida woman accused of crashing an SUV into a parked vehicle appeared to minimize the wreck before making a personal appeal to the officers handling the investigation, according to newly released video.
“I thought we were all friends,” Elizabeth Boucher told Daytona Beach police during the Aug. 30 encounter, bodycam footage shows.
Surveillance footage made public by police captures the SUV slamming into a parked Honda with such force that the car is pushed across a front lawn and disappears from the camera’s frame.
Yet when an officer asked Boucher to explain what had happened, her description on police body camera video was noticeably less dramatic than the crash captured on surveillance.
Booking photo of 24-year-old Elizabeth Boucher after her arrest in Daytona Beach, Fla. (Daytona Beach Police Department)
“I guess I hit the front light of those cars, but I don’t know what really happened,” Boucher said.
“You didn’t just hit the front of the car,” the officer fired back. “You just took the car completely off.”
Body camera video shows the officer then asking Boucher for her driver’s license. She instead hands him a passport.
Bodycam video shows Elizabeth Boucher, 24, speaking with a Daytona Beach police officer beside a damaged vehicle. (Daytona Beach Police Department)
“That’s a passport,” he tells her before again asking for her license.
As the roadside investigation unfolded, Boucher pleaded with officers not to lock her up.
“It’s just a vape. I know. It didn’t even work,” she said. “Please don’t take me to jail over this.”
An officer later told Boucher that the case had been shifted from a civil crash investigation to a criminal DUI investigation, and read her Miranda rights.
Asked whether she would perform field sobriety exercises, Boucher refused, according to the video. She also declined a breath test after an officer formally requested one.
Police bodycam video shows Elizabeth Boucher speaking with a Daytona Beach police officer before she was taken into custody. (Daytona Beach Police Department)
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When Boucher again invoked their supposed friendship, an officer responded, “But we still have a job to do.”
“I know. I’m not resisting arrest,” Boucher said. “I just want to make sure my daughter gets what she needs.”
An officer then instructed her to lean against a vehicle “so you don’t fall.”
“Am I going to jail?” Boucher asked moments later.
“Yes,” the officer replied.
The woman whose vehicle was struck also told officers that Boucher had confronted and slapped her following the crash, according to the bodycam video.
A Daytona Beach police officer detains Elizabeth Boucher during an alleged DUI investigation captured on bodycam video. (Daytona Beach Police Department)
“Did she touch you at any point?” an officer asked.
“Yeah, she smacked me right here,” the woman alleges before saying she wanted to press charges.
After she was placed under arrest, Boucher appeared confused by the slow-moving process.
“Why am I sitting here all alone? Why is nothing happening?” she asked.
“That’s normally what happens when you are arrested,” an officer told her.
Boucher was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, DUI involving damage to property or another person, refusing to submit to DUI testing, battery by touching or striking, resisting an officer without violence and possessing a controlled substance without a prescription, according to police.
An attorney for Boucher could not immediately be identified.
She was released from jail Aug. 31, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to court records.
She is expected back in court in October.