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Woman with 7 DUI arrests says she did not cut off her ankle monitor

Updated May 20, 2023 - 9:03 pm

A woman in custody after seven DUI arrests said Friday it was jail officials, not her, who removed her electronic monitoring device and then misrepresented what happened to the news media.

On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that an officer had made an “erroneous assumption” that Marion Reyes had been responsible for taking off the ankle bracelet.

During an interview at the Clark County Detention Center, Reyes, 35, said her latest troubles happened when she failed to complete a mandated DUI program at a sober living house and was not on her medication for depression and anxiety.

Reyes, a mother of four, said she was ordered sent to jail for 48 hours when jailers “made the mistake of removing my GPS bracelet and releasing me.”

“And then they started saying that I had cut off my bracelet, that I wasn’t charging my bracelet and that was all false information,” she said. “My bracelet had been cut off by the Clark County Detention Center and the battery was never out.”

Timeline of events

Reyes said Friday that she turned herself in on May 1, the bracelet was cut off on May 2 and that she was released on May 3.

Reyes’ insistence that she did not remove her electronic ankle bracelet was confirmed in the statement by the police department, which oversees the county jail.

Reyes self-surrendered on May 1 for a 48-hour remand into custody when booking officers removed her ankle bracelet for security reasons, the department said.

When she was released from custody on May 3 and did not show up for her new court date on May 4, a warrant was issued. A Metro traffic officer then saw that Reyes had an active warrant and incorrectly assumed that she had cut off her ankle bracelet, police concluded.

Reyes has seven drunken driving arrests, according to a May 11 post on Twitter by the police department, which had asked for the public’s help in locating her because she had cut off her monitor.

A day later, police wrote in another tweet that Reyes had turned herself in.

According to Reyes, once she heard about what was said about her GPS device, she surrendered to police and later told jailers that they were wrong to say that she had taken off the device.

“They were kind of just teasing me and it was kind of irritating,” she said. “I told them you’re playing with my freedom here. You know I can potentially get an escape charge because you guys cut it off and you guys won’t admit to it.’

“And they’re like, well, it says you cut it off, I guess you shouldn’t have cut it off, I guess you shouldn’t have gotten a DUI. See you here for the next DUI. And they just mocked me and the whole situation. I feel like this whole case has been a mockery and just a joke to them.”

‘I take full responsibility’

Reyes came to New Mexico with her Bolivian parents when she was not yet 2 years old. They moved to Las Vegas when she was 6.

She has four children, now in the care of her mother, and stated that she started drinking heavily years ago while in a bitter custody dispute with her children’s father, resulting in some of her DUI arrests. She said she’s been prescribed medication for depression and anxiety and has not had any alcohol since late November.

Reyes said she wants to study to become a substance abuse counselor when she gets out of custody. She said she was not trying to excuse her behavior with alcohol, but was upset about what she said are untrue allegations about cutting off her GPS monitor.

“I’m not saying I shouldn’t be punished for what I did,” she said. “I should, by all means. I take full responsibility for my actions and for what I did and putting the community in danger, for putting myself in danger for what I did. But I think that because the fact that it hit the media they’re making me as an example.”

The county, she said, told her that she would have to serve about six months of her one-year sentence in a sober living house and spend more time in another transition facility, which would mean she could only see her children for limited visits for up to a year.

Reyes plans to ask a judge to sentence her to spend the rest of her sentence, which she believes is seven months, in state prison, in order to be reunited with her kids faster.

“I’m going to self-terminate and I’m going to go to prison,” she said. “My children are at an age where they will need me and to be able to see me for an hour a week is more damaging to them.”

A previous version of this story misspelled the first name of Marion Reyes.

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Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.

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