Former USWNT goalkeeper Hope Solo arrested on DWI, child abuse charges

Former U.S. 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 2-year-old twins inside, police said.

A police report said Solo was arrested on Thursday in a shopping center 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 June 28, the report indicated.

According to arrest reports, 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. Responding officers could smell alcohol, and the report 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 medalists, 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 U.S. Soccer-owned van and Stevens was charged