Two Suffolk women arrested under Leandra’s Law in separate DWI cases

Police in Suffolk County arrested two women over the weekend in separate DWI cases that put children in danger, with one stop on Old Country Road in Riverhead and another in East Hampton. In Riverhead, officers said they pulled over Felisa Elias Chaj late April 18, around 10:48 p.m., after spotting a non-lit headlamp. Police said they then saw signs of intoxication and found two children, ages 4 and 12, riding in the vehicle.

Riverhead officers reported bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on Chaj’s breath before field sobriety tests were administered. The case, on one of the county’s busiest east-west corridors, turned a routine equipment stop into a child-endangerment arrest under New York’s aggravated DWI law.

In East Hampton, police said 28-year-old Kelly Guerrero-Merlos was arrested after multiple traffic violations. Officers found children ages 6 and 9 in the car. The children were not hurt and were released to family members, a detail that underscored how quickly an impaired-driving stop can become a family emergency, even when no crash occurs.

Both arrests fall under Leandra’s Law, which makes driving while intoxicated with a child 15 or younger in the vehicle a Class E felony. New York courts must also impose ignition interlock requirements for convictions under the law, meaning offenders cannot legally drive unless a breath-testing device is installed and maintained in their vehicle. The law was signed on November 18, 2009, in memory of Leandra Rosado, the 11-year-old killed in an alcohol-related crash on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

The weekend arrests were not isolated. Suffolk County police made another Leandra’s Law arrest on April 3 in Central Islip in a case involving two children in the car, and another child-in-car DWI arrest in Huntington in March involved a 10-year-old child. Together, the cases show a repeated enforcement pattern across the county, from Riverhead and East Hampton to Central Islip and Huntington.

The law’s purpose is blunt: when a driver is impaired, every child in the vehicle is exposed to a risk that standard DWI charges alone do not capture. In Suffolk, police are continuing to confront that danger on local roads, where a traffic violation can quickly reveal a far more serious threat to children riding inside.