Woman definitely driving during Zoom court hearing insists she isn’t driving
A gobsmacked judge asked a woman ‘do you think I’m stupid?’ after she logged into a Zoom court hearing while quite clearly driving.
Kimberly Carroll, from Detroit, Michigan, joined the hearing to discuss her unpaid debt of nearly $2,000 remotely, Fox News reported.
She initially joined the call on audio only labelled simply as ‘iPhone’, insisting she was ‘sitting in some room or something’.
After being was asked to turn on her camera, she was shown in the drivers seat wearing a seat belt.
But in a bizarre sequence of events, she continued to insist to the judge that she was in fact only a passenger in the vehicle.
Judge Michael K McNally, on seeing Ms Carroll in her car, told her: ‘You cannot be driving ma’am.’
She replied: ‘I’m not driving. I’m a passenger in a car.’
The judge insisted that he would not hear the case while the defendant was travelling in a vehicle.
Ms Carroll said she would ‘pull over’ and explained she was ‘going out of town for a family member’, adding she didn’t know she wasn’t allow to give evidence while on the road.
Judge McNally continued to press her: ‘Am I crazy or does it not look like you are driving that car?’
Asked what side of the car she was on, Ms Carroll replied she was on the ‘left side’, which would be the driver’s side in the US.
The defendant – who can also be seen repeatedly checking her mirrors – then quickly changed her answer and said ‘right side’.
A clip of the Zoom call shows Ms Carroll sat in the front seat with her safety belt coming from her left side.
Unimpressed with Ms Carroll’s answers, Judge McNally said: ‘Now you’re lying to me right?”
The judge then demanded to see the driver of the car, to which Ms Carroll insisted she had to ‘ask their permission’.
Ms Carroll is then shown on video getting out of her car from the driver’s side.
‘You think I’m that stupid’, the judge says.
Judge McNally entered a default judgement with the note that the defendant was ‘not available at the time and then was driving a car and told the court she was not’.
As he got up from his chair, the judge continued to lambast Ms Carroll for he dishonesty.
He said: ‘You’ve got an attitude with you. I’m not putting up with your nonsense. Good luck to you.’
In a statement, Ms Carroll admitted she had made a ‘poor judgement’ and said she should have pulled over when calling into the court.
But she expressed frustration that her case had been turned into a ‘viral spectacle’ and her conduct made a ‘public example’.
She said: ‘I am human. I made a mistake, I own that mistake, and I am willing to accept the consequences.
‘But I hope people will also consider whether the response has been about accountability, or about turning a moment into something far bigger than it needed to be.’
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