Littering in Tennessee is no laughing matter and has serious legal consequences, but should you go to court for tossing something as small as a cigarette butt out the window?
One Antioch woman missed three days of work and spent hundreds of dollars on legal help trying to keep herself out of jail because she said the officer wrote down the wrong code violation.
Heidi Bowers, 33, was running an errand for work on Aug. 24. She drove her husband’s car that day, which doesn’t have an ashtray.
She was driving down Murfreesboro Road when she tossed out her cigarette butt.
“In a panic moment, my cigarette was running down, and I’m like, ‘There’s no ashtray in this car. What am I doing?’” said Bowers. “I ended up tossing it out the window. I absolutely admit I was wrong. Lo and behold the lights started spinning behind me.”
The wife and mother said she hadn’t been pulled over in years, so she thought what happened next might be new procedure. (continue reading at WSMV)