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"Affulenza" mom Tonya Couch arrested for violation of bond
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March 29, 2018
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3:04Now PlayingThe mother of the infamous affluenza teen was arrested on Wednesday for violating terms of her bond.
Tonya Couch was booked into the Tarrant County jail on Wednesday for failing a urinalysis test, FOX4 was told.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn says his deputies picked up Tonya Couch at the county probation office on Wednesday where she failed one of the requirements of her bond.
“She had a warrant issued for her arrest because she failed a urine analysis test,” the sheriff explained. “We immediately arrested her about mid-afternoon."
It's not clear what substance was detected in her urine.
Tonya is accused of withdrawing $30,000 from a bank account and using it to run away with her son, Ethan Couch, to Mexico in December 2015. He was on probation for his drunken driving crash that killed four people in 2013. Both were later captured in Mexico. Tonya is now facing charges of money laundering and hindering apprehension.
Tonya’s arrest comes just days before her son, Ethan, was set to be released from jail after two years behind bars. On Monday, he'll leave the Tarrant County jail, likely with some of the same restrictions his mother had.
Ethan Couch was sentenced to 720 days in jail in April 2016, 80 days for each of the four people he killed in the drunken driving crash. His jail time only came after he violated his original juvenile court probation by escaping to Mexico.
When Tonya finally got a job while out on bond, it was as a bartender raising questions from a FOX 4 viewer whether she should work around alcohol while she's under a court order not to consume it.
"Everybody's watching the Couch family,” Waybourn said. “They're really the poster child for DWI. And I think as we focus in on that horrific night of June 2013, which was absolutely horrifically, at the same time since then on our Texas highways, thousands of people have been killed by DWIs."
It was just last summer that Tonya Couch was in court as prosecutors accused her of sipping beer and attending a gun show, which were both violations of her bond. But a judge chose not to revoke her bond then.
Once Ethan is released from jail, Sheriff Waybourn says hopefully he won't repeat the same mistakes.
"Seems to be their pattern that they do struggle with the rules and what society expects out of them,” he said. “And when they're put under scrutiny, they are not standing up to the test. And that is a tragedy in and of itself because that goes back markedly further than when he was 16 and he committed this offense. That would lead one to believe that it goes back a long ways in that parent-child relationship."
FOX 4 News is a FOX-owned station serving Dallas-Fort Worth and all of North Texas.
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