Cops: Woman Avoids Crash, Charged with Impaired Driving

A 53-year-old Toms River woman whom nearly collided with an oncoming truck was later charged with impaired driving.

Police believe the woman was impaired by overusing prescription medication was driving erraticly on Interstate 95 on Sunday before pulling into a parking lot in town.

Police said they could detect no odor of alcohol on the woman, although her speech was slurred and her eyes were read. Methadone hydrochloride and Oxycodone pills were found in the trunk of her car.

Police gave this account of the incident:

At about 7:30 p.m. Sunday, polie received a report from a driver who said a black Saturn with New Jersey license plates was driving erraticly in the southbound lanes of Interstate 95.

The car had almost swerved into the path of a truck on the highway, the caller told police. The car then left the highway at Exit 11 and ended up in the parking lot of Darien Diner.

When police approached the vehicle, they found the driver, Roseanna Fox, 53, of Toms River, NJ, asleep while the motor was still running. Her speech was slurred, and her eyes were bloodshot, but there was no odor of alcohol on her or in the car. Fox failed field sobriety tests and was arrested.

Suspecting she was impaired by drugs, police called in Zulu, the department's K-9 dog, to sniff around the car. Zulu indicated he smelled something in the trunk, where police found three pill containers inside a pink cloth bag.

Inside the first container, which was unlabeled, there were methadone hydrochloride pills.

The second container was labeled "Ibuprofen" but also held methadone hydrochloride. Altogether, Fox had 171 of the pills in the two containers.

The third container held Oxycodone pills that were prescribed to Fox on Aug. 29, four days before the incident. Although the prescription was for 180 pills, only two were still in the container.

In addition to being charged with driving while under the influence, Fox was charged with obtaining drugs illegally and having narcotics not in their original container.

Fox, of Walnut Street in Toms River, NJ, was held in lieu of posting a $2,500 bond and was due to appear Tuesday in state Superior Court in Stamford.