Chase ends in crash, arrest

SANDPOINT — A Coeur d’Alene woman was hit Tuesday with her second drunken-driving charge in a month after leading Sandpoint Police on a high-speed chase through town and crashing near a public school.

Amber Louise Yassine is charged with second-offense driving under the influence and felony eluding. Judge Barbara Buchanan sustained Yassine’s $100,000 bail on Wednesday. Yassine is obtaining private legal counsel, according to court documents.

A preliminary hearing on the eluding charge is pending.

Yassine, 26, was clocked driving 39 mph as she drove south into Sandpoint on Fifth Avenue. An officer caught up to her 2006 Honda Civic as it turned west onto Pine Street and U.S. Highway 2, a police report said.

Although Yassine would not stop for the officer’s overhead lights, she did stop at the traffic signal at U.S. 2 and Boyer Avenue, the report said. When the light turned green, Yassine allegedly raced down the highway at speeds reaching 80 mph.

Yassine, the report said, turned north onto Division Avenue and sped into the Sandpoint High School parking lot. She reportedly jumped a median separating the junior and senior high school parking lots, crashed into a boulder near Sandpoint Middle School and took off on foot.

She was found hiding behind a nearby tree and arrested. She failed field sobriety tests and refused to provide a breath sample, the report indicated.

Yassine was arrested by Sandpoint Police on suspicion of driving under the influence on Feb. 19, after crashing into an embankment on U.S. 2 near Dairy Depot. Yassine reportedly fled when she was confronted about the crash.

Her breath-alcohol content in that incident was measured at 0.23, nearly three times the legal limit to drive, the arrest report said.