WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Queen City News) – New video shows the moment Winston-Salem Police Officer A.J. Sereika approached the vehicle of former U.S. Women’s National Team goalie Hope Amelia Stevens prior to a March arrest.
Officers had been called to the scene around 9:15 p.m. after a report that the driver had been asleep for “over an hour,” according to the police report.
Video above, obtained by Nexstar’s Queen City News, shows the moments after officers say they located a driver asleep, with her head leaned back on the headrest and the engine running. The body camera video shows two children strapped into car seats in the back captains’ chairs and both appeared to be sleeping.
Stevens, also known as Hope Solo, is a former goalie for the U.S. women’s national soccer team and winner of the World Cup and two-time gold medal winner for the U.S. Olympic team in 2008 and 2012. Solo is known globally and played professional soccer internationally.
Solo lives in Wilkes County, North Carolina, with her husband, Jerramy Stevens, a former NFL player who spent eight years in the league.
The video recording captures what would become an internationally reported arrest for the soccer star.
Within minutes of encountering Stevens, officers began questioning her sobriety.
Through the video, officers continued working to perform field sobriety tests on Solo as she continued telling the officers she was simply napping in the parking lot and had not been drinking. After Solo declined to submit to tests, officers took her into custody.
The WSPD ended the recording there. Queen City News did not have the remainder of the recording showing whether officers read Solo her Miranda warning, officers putting her into the patrol car, or what officers did with her children on scene.
WSPD said Solo’s husband drove to Winston-Salem to pick them up that night on scene.
Officers put Solo into a patrol car at some point and drove her to a Forsyth County Emergency Medical Services station where medics drew blood for police to test Solo’s blood alcohol concentration, as well as other intoxicants that may have been present.
Stevens pled guilty to charges of driving while intoxicated in the Forsyth County District Court on July 25 and was given a 24-month suspended sentence by Judge Victoria L. Roemer. She spent 30 days at an in-patient facility, Hope Valley Inc., as well, Nexstar’s WGHP reports.
Stevens addressed the arrest and her struggles with alcohol in a podcast appearance this summer, calling the incident the “greatest mistake of my life.”