Driver charged with DUI hit woman trying to end street fight

When a party gave way to a fight in the street in the Gresham neighborhood this weekend, a Chicago woman jumped into an SUV and drove off before whipping a U-turn, accelerating and plowing into the crowd, breaking a woman’s shoulder and knee.
Denise Carter’s blood-alcohol content was 0.175 percent, more than twice the legal limit, when she was arrested early Saturday morning in the 8200 block of South Wood Street in the Gresham neighborhood, prosecutors said. On Sunday morning, Cook County Judge James Brown ordered Carter held on $125,000 bond.
Carter, who is charged with aggravated drunken driving and various traffic offenses, was also charged with drunken driving in Cook County in August, according to court records. That case is pending.
As the street fight raged early Saturday, Carter got into a Chevy TrailBlazer and drove away, according to a police report. But she pulled a U-turn, drove the wrong way on the one-way street, sped up and drove into the group, police said. All the combatants jumped out of the way except a 37-year-old woman, who suffered a broken left knee and left shoulder, police said.
The woman who was hit had been trying to resolve the argument that sparked the fight.
Carter, of the 8200 block of South Marshfield Avenue, was pulled from the SUV and attacked by bystanders after the crash, authorities said. She told officers she didn’t intend to hit the woman, and that she was trying to escape the fight when the woman jumped in front of her vehicle.