Apple Valley Woman Charged with Felony DWI

An Apple Valley woman has been charged with felony DWI after police say she refused to submit to a chemical test and pretended to be someone else when they stopped her in Apple Valley last weekend.

Brandi Amber Haag, 25, faces a charge of first-degree DWI, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine.

She is also charged with driving with a canceled license and providing false information to a police officer, both gross misdemeanors with maximum penalties of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, stopped Haag just after 2 a.m. Oct. 15 because her car’s headlights were off.  

As an officer spoke with the driver—who identified herself as someone with the initials L.S.—he smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from the car, the complaint says. The driver also had bloodshot and watery eyes and slurred speech, the officer said.

The woman consented to field sobriety tests, on which she performed poorly, according to the complaint. However, when she refused to submit to a preliminary breath test, she was arrested.

The woman also refused to take a blood test, but consented to take a urine test, at which point the officer discovered her real identity, the complaint says.

Just before 3 a.m., a female officer arrived to oversee the urine test. That officer left when Haag didn’t provide the sample.

Haag was taken to the Dakota County Jail, where an officer asked if she would be able to give a urine sample; she replied, “Maybe.” A female jailer was called, and spent about 30 seconds in the restroom with Haag before “police were advised that no sample was able to be collected.”

Haag’s driving record shows that her driver’s license was canceled. She has three previous DUI convictions in December 2008, January 2010 and March 2011.