Ted Vick 'Had A Rock In His Shoe,' Wasn't Drunk, Lawyer Says After Lawmaker's DUI Arrest

South Carolina state Rep. Ted Vick (D) was arrested for suspected drunk driving early Wednesday morning, after a Bureau of Protective Services officer at the state House saw him stumbling in the facility's parking lot, before entering his vehicle and attempting to drive away.

Vick's lawyer, fellow state Rep. Todd Rutherford (D), says that his client wasn't intoxicated, however. Instead, Rutherford claims that the officer's observation that Vick was "staggering side to side" and "struggling to maintain his balance" before getting behind the wheel was due to the fact that "he had a rock in his shoe."

"The way he walks does not dictate the way you drive. And he only saw him driving 20 feet," Rutherford said, according to the Associated Press. "Ted was not intoxicated. He was not drunk. He was not impaired. I have never in all my years seen anybody stopped by an officer on foot in a parking garage."

Vick's DUI arrest was his second in a year, though his first charge was eventually dropped. The officer reported watching Vick "having trouble driving in a straight line" and running over a flex cone with his vehicle before stopping him. Rutherford said this was due to the large size of his pickup truck.

The officer also "noticed a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from" Vick's breath. Vick refused to take a breath or field sobriety test on site and was taken to jail, where he admitted that he had consumed two glasses of wine at a restaurant before returning to his car. He ultimately refused a breath test at the jail as well, and was held there for hours before being released on bond on Wednesday afternoon.

In the video below, via WLTX, Rutherford describes the incident and criticizes the arresting officer's report:

Read the entire incident report below:

Ted Vick Incident Report

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/ted-vick-lawyer_n_3286012.html

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