Sharon Curry was among 18 arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
An assistant chief with the Boone County Fire Protection District was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
Boone County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Sharon K. Curry at a sobriety checkpoint at about 12:20 a.m. Saturday.
The sheriff’s department, along with the Columbia Police Department and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, set up the checkpoint at Grindstone Parkway and Grindstone Plaza. During the operation, 18 people, including Curry, were arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. More than 800 vehicles passed through the intersection between 11 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday.
Boone County Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Ewing said Curry, 45, of 504 Silver Thorne Drive, was driving her own vehicle with a passenger — identified as Fire Chief Steve Paulsell by fire board member Shelly Dometrorch — when she was stopped. She agreed to a Breathalyzer test, but Ewing declined to release Curry’s blood alcohol content.
A friend posted Curry’s $500 bond and she was released from Boone County Jail at about 3 a.m. Saturday. Curry contacted Dometrorch on Saturday morning to tell Dometrorch about the arrest.
A spokesman with the fire district, Capt. Gale Blomenkamp, declined to comment on Curry’s arrest.
“She wasn’t in a district vehicle,” Blomenkamp said. “She was out there as a citizen, so we wouldn’t have anything to say about it.”
Dometrorch, the member of the fire district’s three-person governing board that handles personnel issues, said she contacted the sheriff’s department Saturday to confirm that Curry was not in a fire district vehicle at the time of her arrest. Dometrorch said the district’s personnel guidelines — which are undergoing revisions — do not directly address Curry’s ar-
rest.
“She was not in a district vehicle; she was on her own time and she is not in a position that would routinely respond to emergencies,” Dometrorch said. “The policy doesn’t cover this, so the board is going to have to get together to see what we want to do.”
Curry and Paulsell have come under heavy fire in recent months amid allegations of financial mismanagement and intra-office fighting. A group of former fire district employees and volunteers filed complaints with the Missouri Human Rights Commission this summer claiming, among other things, that Curry and Paulsell verbally harassed them and created a hostile work environment.
Curry could not be reached for comment.