Man arrested for DWI at twice legal limit

Eugene Collins Clayton, 56, of Gainesville, is charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI) involving a June 2 incident when he drove at twice the legal intoxication limit, according to court documents. 

According to the probable cause statement, prepared by Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. D. Johnson, around 5 p.m. June 2, he was patrolling County Road 805, north of Highway 160 in Gainesville. 

“I observed a 2003 black GMC 1500 traveling westbound ahead of me. The vehicle crossed the center of the roadway and looked like it was going to turn but proceeded for a few hundred more yards... then stopped in the roadway,” Johnson says in his report. “I activated my emergency lights and conducted a traffic stop. I contacted the driver, later identified as Eugene Clayton, and immediately noticed the odor of alcohol coming from inside the vehicle, his speech was slow and slurred and he had his phone up and told me he was trying to find the Dollar General.”

Johnson asked Clayton to accompany him back to the police vehicle, and he did, the report says. 

“As he ambulated back to my patrol vehicle, I noticed him stagger, sway and have an uncertain gait. I asked him how much he had to drink, and he told me six Bud Light beers,” the report says.

Johnson administered a preliminary breath test, which indicated his blood alcohol content was over .200 percent, the report says. In Missouri, the legal driving limit of blood alcohol content is .08 percent. 

He was arrested and transported to the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department, where he gave another breath sample at 6:20 p.m. that registered at .176 percent.  

A computer check showed that Clayton did not have a valid driver’s license as he had a non-eligible status, and he was unable to show proof of insurance on the vehicle. 

He’s charged as a chronic DWI offender, based on his previous DWI convictions. The report says he’s been convicted of DWI seven times, and these four were listed in the document (as four is the number of convictions that elevate the defendant to a chronic offender status): one in 2001 and another in 2002 in Clinton County, Iowa, once in 2003 in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, and once in 2009, again in Clinton County, Iowa. 

He’s also charged as a prior felony-offender based on convictions of manufacturing/deliver/possessing meth of more than 28 grams in 1993 and breaking and entering in 1995 in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, and robbery in 2021 in Garland County, Arkansas. 

The chronic and prior offender statuses mean that he will face harsher sentencing guidelines if he is convicted of the charge. 

In addition to the felony-level DWI charge, he’s charged with misdemeanors of operating a vehicle on a highway without a valid license, trespassing, owner/operator of a vehicle failing to maintain financial responsibility (failing to register) and failure to drive to the right half of the roadway when it was of sufficient width.

He was scheduled for a bond reduction hearing at 9:30 a.m. today, June 12, before Associate Judge Raymond Gross. Results of the hearing were not available at presstime.