Pasco Deputy Fired After Nearly Hitting Trooper: Sheriff

HUDSON, FL — The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has fired one of its own following a Monday morning arrest on DUI charges. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the 26-year-old woman nearly struck one of its troopers while he was working the scene of an unrelated traffic fatality.

Katrina Pereira, a highway patrol report said, was driving in the area of U.S. 19 and Hudson Avenue just before 2 a.m. May 8. Troopers were blocking the northbound lanes of U.S. 19 at the time due to the previous crash, the report noted. The roadblock included “flashing flares, reflective cones, four marked patrol vehicles, and three State Troopers with flashlights controlling traffic,” the report noted.

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As Pereira neared the roadblock, troopers say she approached at “a high rate of speed, and showed no signs of slowing down.” Consequently, the troopers “began waving our flashlights in an attempt to gather the vehicle’s attention.”

Pereria, the report said, ended up hitting two cones and forcing a trooper to jump out of the way to avoid being struck.

Pereira stopped at the point, the report said, and told troopers “she never observed us standing in the roadway.” She also reportedly told them she was distracted by a male passenger, was trying to find a song on the radio and was not wearing her glasses at the time.

As troopers ran her license, she is also accused of pulling her vehicle “through the fatality scene and then (coming) to a stop in the middle of the fatality scene,” the report noted.

When troopers asked her to get out of the vehicle, they said Pereira had an odor of alcohol on her breath. After field sobriety tests were performed, she was charged with DUI. The report noted she provided two breath samples at the Land O’ Lakes Jail that came back at 0.162 and 0.166.

Pereira was booked into the jail Monday morning and later released on bond. The sheriff’s office announced late Monday afternoon that she had been terminated.

Further information is not yet available.

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