It happens to the best of us: a few beers in, you pass out clutching a half-eaten taco, sour cream and carnitas crumbs spilling onto your shirt. Hopefully, though, the last time (don’t try and pass it off like it was a one-time thing) you found yourself in this messy predicament, you were not sitting in your car in the drive-through lane of your local Taco Bell, with your brake engaged and your foot on the accelerator. Matthew Falkner, a 30-year-old from Palm City, Florida, shows just how bad such a situation can get.
First, his engine caught on fire. The police were summoned, maybe in response to a noise complaint from the Taco Bell’s neighbors, who were hearing the incessant honking of the stalled cars behind Falkner in the drive-through line. The police knocked on the window of Falkner’s Chevy pickup, and found him nigh-unresponsive. They pulled his foot off the accelerator, got him to nod awake and asked him for a photo ID.
Then, in a moment of high, unintentional comedy (LA Weekly called it to “Buster Keaton meets Cops“), Falkner, instead of handing over his driver’s license, tried to give the police officer his taco. The police officer, assumedly less amused than the blogosphere, arrested Falkner for driving under the influence.
The TC Palm‘s Off The Beat blog, which originally reported the story, noted that the resultant affidavit specified neither “whether it was a Soft Taco, Crunchy Taco, Volcano Taco, Double Decker Taco Supreme, Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Taco or another variety of Taco Bell taco” nor “whether Falkner got to eat the taco.”
