Cole County, Missouri – A Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper is being praised for preventing a potential disaster after stopping a wrong-way driver early on December 7.

Shortly before 1 a.m., Corporal Winters of MSHP Troop F was traveling west on U.S. 54 when he spotted headlights approaching in the westbound lanes. A white GMC then passed him, heading east in the wrong direction.

Winters turned his patrol car around into the eastbound lanes and attempted to get the driver’s attention while paralleling her vehicle, warning oncoming motorists. “During the entire time I was right next to her paralleling her vehicle, she ever once looked over at me, or acknowledged my emergency equipment,” he wrote in court documents.

When the driver continued without stopping, Winters used a “forcible stopping technique” to intercept and disable the GMC on the Missouri River Bridge. The driver, 34-year-old Arielle Ripplinger of Columbia, Missouri, reportedly smelled of alcohol and admitted she had taken three shots of tequila while following her GPS.

A preliminary breath test showed Ripplinger had a blood alcohol content of 0.153 percent. She was arrested and booked with the Cole County Sheriff’s Office. Her charges include driving while intoxicated as a prior offender and driving the wrong direction on a divided highway, creating an immediate threat of an accident.

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