Prison Time Ordered For LITH Woman With 3 DUIs In 19 Days

MCHENRY COUNTY, IL – A 34-year-old Lake in the Hills woman who turned to alcohol after learning her husband had numerous affairs and ended up racking up three DUI arrests in just 19 days has been sentenced to four years in prison. Tiara M. Norris, of the 800 block of Peachtree Court, has turned her life around since her last DUI arrest on July 29, 2013, according to testimony at her sentencing this past week. She has earned two college degrees, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and attended AA meetings, has remarried and also regained custody of her daughter, the Daily Herald reports.

But, despite her good efforts, the law requires a prison sentence for anyone who has accumulated five DUIs and a Kane County judge on Thursday determined that, beside the three arrests in July 2013, Norris had two other DUIs in her past, according to the Daily Herald. He ended up handing down the minimum prison sentence of four years in prison, which could be cut in half for good behavior, and ordered her to two years of parole after her release and to pay $5,000 in fines. The maximum prison sentence for five DUIs is 15 years in prison.

The sentencing came after Norris pleaded guilty to aggravated DUI and driving while her license was suspended this past summer.

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Her most recent DUI occurred at about 11 p.m. on July 29, 2013, when Norris drove through the front lawn of a home on Win Haven Drive in Elgin, prosecutors said. She then got out of her vehicle and tried to enter the home, according to the Daily Herald. Her blood alcohol content was .276, which is well over the legal limit in Illinois of .08.

Norris was also charged with DUI in Kane County on July 10, 2013 and July 23, 2013, according to online court records. During the first arrest that month, she registered a BAC of .32 during a preliminary breath test after being pulled over for speeding, and on July 23, an officer found her in a car in a ditch, according to a 2013 Daily Herald article.

She was also arrested in August 2012 in Lake in the Hills for felony DUI and for endangering the life of a child. She was sentenced in that case to two years probation, fined $3,507 and ordered to go to DUI school and parenting classes, according to the Daily Herald. In addition, she was arrested for DUI in 2010.

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