NO. 07-06-0140-CR IN THE COUR

T OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVEN TH DISTRICT OF TEXAS

AT AMARILLO PANEL B OCTOBER 9, 2006

______________________________ TERESA ANN PU LLEY, Appellant

v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

_________________________________ FROM THE 20 TH DISTRIC T COURT O F MILAM COUN TY; NO. 21,177; HON. ED MAGRE, PRESIDING

_______________________________ Memorandum Opinion

______________________________ Before QUINN, C.J., and CAMPBELL and HANCOCK, JJ. Teresa Ann Pulley

(appellant)

appeals her

convicti on for drivi ng whil e intoxicated. Her two issues concern the trial court’s decis ion t o den y h er motion to suppr ess. The motion shou ld ha ve been granted because the officer purportedly lacked basis to initially stop a n d t h e r e a fte r

a r r e s th e r

fo r t h e c h a r g e d o ff

e n s e
. We overrul e each issue and affirm the judgment.1 At the t ime, t he offi cers were sea rchi ng for a tr uck and dri ver pur port edly inv olv ed in a n alt ercat ion at a loc al con ven ienc e sto re. 2 The record contai ns evidence illustrat ing that o f ficers saw

a truck bein g driven at night without i ts headlights being activated. 1 In particul ar, the officers s aw “movement of
some type in thedark [on Bell Street] , and then . . . br ake lights

went off and backup l ights
came on, and the v ehicl e backu p lig hts ca me off and the brake lig hts went off agai n, then the vehicle went into t he drivew ay” from the s treet. Duri ng tha t timeof day, “. . . the vehicle operator [was] require d to use their [sic ] headl igh t s,” according to the testifying officer. Next, after the officers ar rived at the drivew ay and exi ted their vehicle, appell ant was seen walking “around the front of the” truck. One of the officers asked appellant to “ come over to the car,” to which di rective she responded that “she reall y didn’t d o anything wrong”and that“she just de cided to follow her nephew .” As this occurred, someone ex ited the residence in front of whi ch the detention occur red. This person then info rmed the off icers thatappellant “was all alone” when she ori ginallyleft the abode. And, though an officer purported to seesomeone else run from the area when the y came upon thenow parked truck, appellant “tol d [them] that nobody ran from the vehicle. ” Nor was anyone else found in the area. During the discourse between appellant a nd the office rs, itwas noticed she “had an odor of alcoholic bev

erage coming from her breath.”Though denyi ng that she had been drinking, appellant nevertheless admitted to taki ng “Xanax .” Thereafter, the officers had her perform field sobriety tests. Base d upon her performa nce of those tests, th e officers attempted to arrest he r. At that point, appellant “took o ff running.”3

Statute requires one to engage a vehicle’s headlights while dr iving after dark. T EX
. T RANSP
. C ODE A NN
. §547.302(a)(1) (Vernon 1999) . That the officers s aw someone disobeying the statute prov ided them wi th, at the ver yleast, reaso nable suspici on to inves tigat e app aren t crim inal activi ty. Thus, they w ere entitled to detain appellant , given her proximity to a truck that had just stopped and her appa rent exit from the vehic le. It

was during this detention that the officers encountered other c ircumstances permitting them to investig ate the possibil ity that ot her crimes ha d been committed ( i.e

. drivin g while intoxicated) by appel lant. The thrust of appel l ant’s contenti on, howev er, invol ves the iden tity of the per son drivi ng the truck. That is, appellan t believed that the officers had i nsufficient evi den c e upon w h i c h t o d e t a i n h e r a s t h e t r u c kd r i v e r
. We disagree. Again, the officers wit nessed the truck first in the street and then pu ll into the driveway. Thus, it could be rationally said thatsomeone was op erat ing it o n a public road. Furthermore, app ellant was the only person found in the im mediate v icinity of the truck immedi ately after i t stopped in the drive way. And, whil e the officers thoug ht they saw someone run from the area , not only did appe lla nt de ny t hat a nyo ne ha d ru n fr om her vehic le, she admitted to just hav ing followed her nephew. So too did a thi rd party represent that appellant h ad be en alone when she left

in the vehicl e. Nor can w e forget that appel lant tried toescape upon lear ning of her arrest

. Thus, we have before us more than a ppellant’s ow n statements purpor ting to identify her

as the driver . We have her proximi ty to the vehicle, the absence of oth ers in the area, the statement of a thir d party and a ppellant’s ow n consciousnes s of guilt ( as evinced by her attemptto escape). In toto , this evi dence, if accepted by the trial court, was enough to vest the officer s with probable cause to believe that sever al crimes had occurred4

in their prese nce ( i.e. , drivi ng wit hout lightsand whileintoxicated) and that appellant was the one who committe d them. Accordingly, we affirm the decision to overrule appellant ’s motion to suppress.

Per Curiam Do not publish

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