A Villager has entered a plea to a drunk driving charge after a golf cart crash last week which left her boyfriend with a head injury.
Cynthia Devane Jaudon, 72, of the Village of Virginia Trace, on Wednesday entered a plea of not guilty in Sumter County Court through her attorney, Gail Grossman. Jaudon remains free on $20,000 bond.
Jaudon was at the wheel of a white Yamaha golf cart on the night of Feb. 25 when she ran into a tunnel wall in the area of County Road 466A and Morse Boulevard, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.
When sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene at 10:37 p.m., EMS personnel were already treating a man “lying on the golf cart roadway, just outside the tunnel,” the report said. Jaudon said the man had been thrown from the golf cart when it crashed into the tunnel wall.
“EMS advised his right shoulder bone appeared fractured, one of his right-hand fingers was broken and had a head injury,” the deputy wrote in the arrest report.
The man was transported to Ocala Regional Medical Center as a trauma patient.
Witnesses who called 911 said Jaudon and the man both appeared to be intoxicated.
When deputies asked Jaudon for her driver’s license, she handed them her Villages ID. She said she had been heading home from Brownwood Paddock Square and the passenger “at the last minute” reminded her she needed to turn at the tunnel.
Jaudon struggled through field sobriety exercises and claimed that she suffers from Sciatica. She refused to provide a breath sample.
