Lisle Township supervisor charged with DUI
Lisle Township Supervisor Diane C. Hewitt has been charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence of alcohol.
Hewitt was cited at 9:53 p.m. on Nov. 1 while driving in Warrenville, according to Warrenville police records.
Hewitt has not returned calls or messages seeking comment. Her attorney declined to comment.
According to police records, someone called 911 to report a car weaving and hitting a curb on Roosevelt Road in Wheaton, near County Farm Road, then nearly hitting a mailbox and other vehicles.
When police located the vehicle, it was on Butterfield Road near Madison Road in Warrenville.
According to police, when they asked Hewitt where she was, she told them she was heading home to Lisle from Glendale Heights. They asked where she had been, and she said she had been at a "work event," according to the police report and police videos.
The report alleges she failed two field sobriety tests, including a heel-to-toe walk, and that she was stumbling and swaying. In a police dashboard camera video, Hewitt is seen eating an apple as she listens to instructions for the test. In another video, she retches while in the back seat of a squad car and says she is going to vomit.
The report does not contain a blood-alcohol level because Hewitt was unsuccessful on three tries to give a sample to the breath-testing machine at the police department.
She told police she had one glass of wine and left the event around 8 p.m., according to the report. A bottle of wine was found in her purse when she opened it to look for her driver's license, according to a body-camera video. The report does not say if the bottle was open, and it is unclear from a photograph.
She was released on her own recognizance, with a Nov. 29 court date.
According to a YouTube video of a Nov. 8 township board meeting, Trustee Autumn Geist said Hewitt had been attending a countywide township officials event. The DUI arrest is "very, very serious" and a "blight" on the reputation of the township because Hewitt was representing the township in a leadership capacity at the event, Geist said.
Hewitt, 44, was elected in 2021. She lives in the 6000 block of Lenox Court in Lisle.
Court records indicate that she was also charged with DUI in 2003 in Glen Ellyn after a minor crash.
In August, the township board issued a no-confidence vote regarding Hewitt. The trustees stated concerns, including that Hewitt was spending money that exceeded the township budget without board approval, that she moved the clerk's office without board approval, that she spread false information, and that she created an environment of mistrust and hostility.
She is chairman of the Lisle Township Democratic Organization. The group asked her to resign from the chairmanship in August.