Florida Driver Live-Streams While Claiming to Be Drunk
Whitney Beall, of Lakeland, Florida, was charged with DUI.
— -- A Periscope viewer helped a Florida police department identify and arrest an allegedly drunken-driver who was livestreaming from her car.
Whitney Beall, 23, of Lakeland, Florida, can be heard repeatedly saying she was drunk while slurring her words from behind the wheel of what appears to be a moving vehicle.
"I'm driving home drunk," she can be heard saying on the video.
By using Periscope, the live-streaming video service that allows app users to tune into anyone's live video based on location, other Periscope users were able to watch her driving Oct. 10 and were able to type in comments.
One viewer urged her to stop driving before she hurt herself, the Lakeland Police Department posted on its Facebook page.
Multiple Periscope viewers called 911 to report the incident, the police said, but part of the problem was that the viewers could not report her location because she never stated it clearly in the video.
"As the caller was giving police dispatch the details from the video, the video was turned off several times and the caller was unable to provide a vehicle description other than it was a Toyota," the police wrote in their Facebook post. "This made locating the intoxicated driver more difficult for officers searching the surrounding area and with nothing more to go on other than the make of the car."
"Her vehicle abruptly hit the south curb with the right front tire/wheel just as officer’s initiated a traffic stop. Officers advised that the driver did not even brake after striking the curb," the police wrote on their Facebook post.
The post added, "The Lakeland Police Department does not provide officers with access to Periscope as an authorized software tool and therefore they did not have the ability to monitor the driver’s actions. One officer took the initiative to utilize their personal account in an effort to locate the driver. Based on what the officer could observe, and landmarks in the area from the streaming video, LPD officers located the driver eastbound on Carpenters Way."
Responding officers said that they smelled alcohol on her breath and she failed sobriety tests.
Beall was charged with driving under the influence, was transported to the Polk County Jail and has since been bailed out, officials said.
She did not respond to ABC News' requests for comment.