Britney Spears told officers she had taken a combination of prescription medications and consumed a champagne mimosa before getting behind the wheel on the night of her drink-drive arrest earlier this year, according to a newly surfaced police report.
The 44-year-old singer was stopped by California Highway Patrol officers on the evening of 4 March after her black BMW 430i was reported driving erratically and at high speed on the southbound 101 Freeway near Newbury Park, Ventura County. According to the Los Angeles Times, dispatchers had received reports of the car “erratically braking, swerving and driving without taillights” before officers pulled her over near the Westlake Boulevard exit. She was alone in the vehicle.
The fresh detail is contained in a CHP report first obtained by US Weekly and subsequently reviewed by The Daily Mail. It states that Spears confirmed taking 200mg of the anticonvulsant and mood stabiliser Lamictal, 40mg of the antidepressant Prozac and 2.5mg of the ADHD medication Adderall earlier that day. She also told officers she had consumed “one champagne mimosa” around seven hours before driving, and that her last meal had been ice cream eaten in the mid-afternoon.
The officer who stopped her wrote that her vehicle did not immediately react to his emergency lights and that he had to activate the siren to gain her attention. After the stop, he described detecting a “distinct odor of an alcoholic beverage” coming from her breath and person, and noted that her speech was rapid and slurred, her gait unsteady, and that she was fidgeting with her fingers. Spears was said to have “red and watery eyes” with dilated pupils, and rated herself a zero on a sobriety scale of zero to ten. She subsequently passed two chemical breath tests.
The report describes the interaction as difficult from the outset. Spears reportedly refused for around 10 minutes to step out of the car, telling officers she had been “pranked and harassed in the past” and that she wanted to speak to her lawyer. She is said to have asserted her “right as a woman” not to exit the vehicle before eventually complying. Officers also recorded “drastic mood swings” during the encounter, with her demeanour shifting from “confrontational and agitated to flamboyant”, and noted that at one point she began speaking with a British accent.
A search of the car turned up a brown purse containing a bottle of pills labelled as Adderall that were not prescribed to Spears, along with an empty wine glass in the cup holder between the driver and front passenger seats. According to TMZ, those pills are being tested to establish whether they are pure Adderall or have been laced with other substances such as fentanyl, cocaine or methamphetamine — a concern, the outlet reported, because the tablets were said to have been obtained in Mexico, where street versions of the drug have been linked to such contamination.
During field sobriety testing, the report states, Spears complained that the lights were hurting her head and indicated she did not want to continue. She was unable or unwilling to follow the officer’s finger throughout the test, kept moving her head after being asked to keep still, and told the officer she was blind in her left eye, although she could see his finger.
She was taken to a CHP office in Moorpark for a drug recognition evaluation before being moved to Los Robles Medical Center in Thousand Oaks for a blood draw. The report alleges that, in an attempt to delay the blood test, Spears asked to use the restroom, where she became “argumentative and belligerent” and was placed in handcuffs. According to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, the singer was booked at around 3am and released just after 6am.
Spears pleaded guilty to a DUI offence earlier this month, about two months after her arrest, and was sentenced to 12 months’ probation at Ventura County Superior Court. Following her arrest, she had checked into a substance abuse rehabilitation facility for three weeks. Her attorney Michael Goldstein appeared at the arraignment on 4 May.
A representative for the singer, speaking after the March arrest, told The Daily Mail: “This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable. Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law, and hopefully this can be the first step in the long-overdue changes that need to occur in her life.” The statement added that her sons would be spending time with her and that her “loved ones are going to come up with an overdue plan to set her up for success and wellbeing”.
The arrest has reignited concern about Spears’s wellbeing, more than four years after a Los Angeles judge ended the 13-year conservatorship that had controlled her personal and financial affairs since 2008. The arrangement, which was originally put in place following concerns about her mental health, came to an end in November 2021. The singer has spoken publicly in recent months about a difficult relationship with members of her family, including a social media post in February in which she said she was “scared” of them and “lucky to be alive”. The Daily Mail said it had contacted representatives for Spears and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office for further comment.
