Police Corral Suspected Drunk Driver Going Wrong Way On I-75

ROYAL OAK (WWJ) - Police stopped a wrong-way driver on I-75 overnight who was apparently driving drunk with a child in the vehicle.

The incident happened around 4:15 a.m. Friday when police received several 911 calls about a driver heading northbound in the southbound lanes of I-75 near I-94 in Detroit.

"Our dispatchers contacted MDOT and they started to go to their wrong-way driver protocol, which is turning on the emergency signs on the side of the freeways to alert people that there was a wrong-way driver," Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw told WWJ's Charlie Langton. "And we started to look for it on the freeway cameras."

Troopers eventually spotted the vehicle as it passed 8 Mile Road and then caught up with the driver at the I-696 interchange in Royal Oak, where the vehicle was finally stopped.

"When troopers made contact with the driver, a 27-year-old female from Ida, Michigan, she appeared intoxicated," said Shaw. "They conducted their roadside tests and she was arrested for drunk driving."

After putting the woman in the back of a squad car, troopers went back to search her vehicle -- and that's when they made a startling discovery.

"They located a 1-year-old child, a boy, in the back seat just covered with a blanket, not secured in a car seat or anything like that," said Shaw.

The child, who was uninjured, was turned over to Child Protective Services.

The woman remains in custody at the Oakland County Jail. Charges are pending.

No accidents or injuries were reported.

"Fortunately at 4 o'clock in the morning, traffic hasn't picked up that much," said Shaw. "But definitely if she would have been involved in some type of crash, normally wrong-way driving crashes are fatalities -- especially for that child not being restrained."

An investigation is ongoing.

Stay with WWJ Newsradio 950 and CBSDetroit.com for the latest.