"2010 Miss USA Rima Fakih gets probation in DUI case" Associated Press, May 10, 2012
HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. - Rima Fakih, the first Arab-American to be crowned Miss USA, avoided jail during sentencing Wednesday in her Michigan drunken driving case, an experience she described as “very humbling.’’
Judge William McConico put Fakih on six months of probation, ordered the former beauty queen to perform 20 hours of community service, and said she must pay $600 in fines and costs. Fakih also must attend an alcohol safety class.
The 26-year-old pleaded no contest last month to driving
while visibly impaired in Highland Park, an enclave of Detroit. A
no-contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for
sentencing. Fakih faced a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail.
Fakih has said she was not drinking the night of her arrest in December, but two police breath tests put her blood alcohol content at more than twice the legal limit.
Fakih’s family moved to New York from Lebanon in 1993 and then to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn 10 years later. When she won the Miss USA Pageant in 2010, supporters described her win as a victory for diversity, saying it countered negative stereotypes about people of Middle Eastern descent in post-Sept. 11 America.
Do you know what would be more beautiful? And end to the drone missile attacks and the sparing of beautiful Muslim women.
Police said Fakih was driving 60 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone and weaving in and out of traffic before they pulled her over, and officers found an open bottle of champagne behind the driver’s seat of the 2011 Jaguar.
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