A second-grade teacher at Springfield Elementary School was arrested and charged with drunken driving-refusal and obstruction of a law enforcement officer with violence, a felony.
Cpl. Robert J. Cochran of the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to Ga. 30 and the county line at 1:15 a.m. Sunday on a report of a red Dodge Challenger traveling west in the eastbound lane.
The car, a 2010 Dodge Challenger, ran into the ditch at Kelly Drive before the deputy arrived. Tracy Ann Granzow, 40, of Rincon, was sitting on the ground beside the car, according to the arrest report.
The deputy said he could smell a strong odor of alcoholic beverage as he approached the woman. She told the deputy she had two shots of alcohol two or three hours earlier.
She said she had taken anxiety medication eight hours earlier that could affect her performance in a field sobriety test.
She refused a breath test, saying, “I’m a teacher. I’m not doing it.” She also refused to give a blood sample.
At the jail, the deputy discovered that she had slipped the handcuffs off her wrists when she was in the back of the patrol car. She slapped at the deputy’s hands and arms, resisting being placed back in handcuffs.
She refused to get out of the patrol car and had to be pulled out. She tried to knee Cochran in the groin, “striking me in the right thigh with her knee.”
Granzow was charged with obstruction of a law enforcement officer with violence, a felony; driving under the influence-refusal; failure to maintain lane; operation of an unregistered vehicle or vehicle without current license plate or decal; and no insurance (unable to provide proof).
She was released Sunday on $7,900 bond, according to Effingham Sheriff’s Spokesman David Ehsanipoor.