A man was arrested in Queens, New York, and charged with driving while intoxicated, reportedly with a child in the car. Steven Shung, 39, was arrested in the evening and charged with DWI, along with acting in a manner injurious to a child and criminal possession of a controlled substance, police said.
Police said Shung had alcohol on his breath and was speaking incoherently when he was pulled over, and that his 5-year-old child was in the car with him. Officers also reported finding two small bags of marijuana, a small quantity of crack, and an empty beer bottle. It was reported that the accused man was a sanitation worker. No other details were given.
What this Queens DWI case shows
Once a child under 16 is allegedly in the car, an ordinary first-offense DWI is no longer an ordinary case. Under New York's Leandra's Law, driving while intoxicated with a child passenger is charged as an automatic felony, even for a first offender with no accident and no injury. Add a drug-possession allegation and a child-endangerment count, and a single traffic stop produces several separate charges at once.
Cases with these facts are serious, but the same defenses still apply: was the stop lawful, was the testing reliable, and can the People actually prove impairment? A Queens DWI lawyer who knows the Kew Gardens courts from the inside is exactly who you want reading the file. Learn more about the penalties a New York DWI carries.
This write-up is drawn from public news reports at the time and is preserved here for general information only. A charge is an accusation, not proof of guilt, and every person is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Nothing here predicts the outcome of any other case, and nothing here is legal advice.