DUI case: Ex-Miss USA Rima Fakih gets probation

By Katrina Jones May 9th, 2012 ( 1 Comment )

Highland Park, Michigan: Former Miss USA Rima Fakih escaped jail sentence on Wednesday in her Michigan driving under the influence case and Judge William McConico put her on six months of probation.

The judge ordered Fakih to pay $600 as a fine and that she must perform 20 hours of community service.

She faced a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail. She pleaded no contest last month which is not an admission of guilt but treated as such for sentencing.

Fakih said she was very relieved not to have been sentenced to serve jail time. “But let’s say it got to that point. I was willing to pay the price it took because I knew I made mistakes,” AP quoted her as saying.

“I was not drinking the night of my arrest in December,” she said, adding but two police breath tests put her blood alcohol content at more than twice the legal limit.

According to police, she was driving at the speed of 60 mph while the speed limit in the region was 30 mph and overtaking the traffic before police intervened, and officers found an open bottle of champagne behind the driver’s seat of her car.

One breath test put her blood alcohol content at 0.20 and another put it at 0.19. The legal limit is .08.

Fakih said Wednesday the incident was out of character for her and that she didn’t take her first drink until age 23.

“It’s not something that I grew up to be like a party girl or anything like that,” she said.

“I’m more of an international figure now. I have young girls and people from all over the world watching me, so I have to make sure that anything I do I’m taking extra precaution,” Fakih said. “Even though my intentions weren’t to drive drunk, I did put myself and a lot of people in danger. So I did learn a lot.”