Former USA star goalkeeper Hope Solo arrested on DWI, child abuse charges

Former US women’s national team star goalkeeper Hope Solo was arrested after she was found passed out behind the wheel of a vehicle in North Carolina with her two-year-old twins inside, police said.

A police report said Solo was arrested on Thursday in a shopping centre parking lot in Winston-Salem and charged with driving while impaired, resisting a public officer and misdemeanor child abuse. She has been released from jail and has a court date of 28 June, the report indicated.

According to an arrest warrant, a passerby noticed Solo passed out behind the steering wheel for more than an hour with the vehicle’s engine running and the two children in the backseat.

A responding officer could smell alcohol, and the warrant said that Solo refused a field sobriety test and her blood was drawn instead.

Rich Nichols, a Texas-based attorney who represents Solo, released a statement Friday but didn’t respond to specific questions on the charges and said his client wouldn’t respond, either.

“On the advice of counsel, Hope can’t speak about this situation, but she wants everyone to know that her kids are her life, that she was released immediately and is now at home with her family, that the story is more sympathetic than the initial charges suggest, and that she looks forward to her opportunity to defend these charges,” Nichols said.

Solo was dismissed from the national team following the 2016 Olympics in Brazil after calling the Swedish team “cowards” for taking a defensive stance against the defending gold medallists, ending a laudable playing career that was also marred by controversy.

She was suspended for 30 days in early 2015 after she and husband Jerramy Stevens were pulled over in a US Soccer-owned van and Stevens was