A man from Mason, Ohio, is facing his 17th drunk-driving charge, ranking him among the state’s worst repeat offenders. Just four months after leaving prison after serving nearly four years for his 16th conviction, Kevin J. Ante, 45, was arrested for the 17th time.
West Chester police say they caught Ante behind the wheel on Sunday despite a lifetime driving suspension.
"Evidently, this person needs a longer time in prison to get the changes in his life that he needs. He received four years last time; now he’s going to be eligible for up to 10 years," said Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper.
"He’s putting all of us at risk because he wants to drink and drive. He knows he has an alcohol problem. He can sit on his porch and drink all day long…but he wants to expose us all to the danger of him driving down the street drunk,” Piper added.
Janice Morse of the Cincinatti Enquirer writes that Ante, who is to appear Tuesday in a West Chester court, is being held in the Butler County Jail on charges of OVI (operating a vehicle impaired), driving with a suspended license, refusing to take a breathalyzer test, and a marked-lanes violation.
Ohio Department of Public Safety Records show that among more than 1 million licensed drivers in a four-county area—Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren—only six drivers have as many or more drunken-driving convictions as Ante. Two people are tied for the state’s worst drunken-driving record at 20 convictions each.
Based on a study that showed police make one arrest for every 88 episodes of impaired driving, "If he’s been arrested 17 times, he’s most likely been out there drunk (almost 1,500 times)," said Andrea Rehkamp of Oxford Township, a spokeswoman for Southwest Ohio Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
"We’re fortunate that no one was injured or killed, or even that he didn’t injure or kill himself," she said. "He can continue to drive drunk at will, and to stop him, he needs him to be locked up for as long as he possibly can. That’s the only thing that’s going to stop him from driving drunk."
The highest number of convictions that MADD is aware of in the United States is 29 in South Dakota, Rehkamp said.
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