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The Villages
Sunday, June 16, 2024

Villager learns fate during sentencing hearing in drunk driving case from 2018

Patricia Johnson

A Villager learned her fate during a sentencing hearing Monday as the result of a drunk driving case from 2018.

Patricia Lee Johnson, 68, will lose her driver’s license for six months, has been placed on probation for one year and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.

Johnson, who at the time of her arrest was living on Russell Loop in the Village of Bridgeport at Lake Sumter, had been at the wheel of a red Mazda Miata when she was taken into custody April 22 by a Sumter County sheriff’s deputy. 

The deputy had been responding to a complaint of a reckless driver on Buena Vista Boulevard, said to be heading toward Lake Sumter Landing. It was shortly after 11 a.m. and Johnson was identified by her New Jersey driver’s license during a traffic stop.

In listening to the original 911 call, Johnson’s attorney Gail Louise Grossman learned that the female caller originally described the “irregular driver” as a man.

“Mrs. Johnson looks nothing like a man and could not be mistaken for a man,” Grossman wrote in a motion filed in Sumter County Court.

Grossman also claimed that Johnson suffers from “severe medical issues” which made it difficult for her to perform roadside field sobriety exercises at the time of her arrest. Grossman had indicated she would call Dr. Sundeep Shah of Premier Medical Associates in The Villages as a witness at the trial.

During the months of legal maneuvering, Johnson sought permission to vacation in the British Virgin Islands.

A jury trial had been set to begin Monday, but Johnson opted instead to enter a plea of no contest in the case.

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