‘Failure of a system' allows drivers convicted of DUI in DC to keep their licenses

A failure at the District’s Department of Motor Vehicles that allowed a woman with five DUI convictions to keep her license was not an isolated incident and dates back several years, according to a D.C. government source.

“This is more than a technical glitch,” D.C. Councilman Charles Allen said. “This is a failure of a system.”

The error came to light after a fatal crash on Rock Creek Parkway in March. Nakita Walker was drunk and driving at least 100 mph in the seconds before she crossed the yellow line and struck a car, killing a Lyft driver and his two passengers, prosecutors say.

The investigation found Walker had previous DUI convictions, including three in D.C. dating back to 2015, but her driving privileges weren’t suspended or revoked as required by D.C. law.

Last month, D.C. Deputy Mayor Lucinda Babers testified to the D.C. Council that Walker’s license wasn’t suspended because the Superior Court never notified D.C. DMV of the convictions, but earlier this week, the head of the DMV sent a letter to Allen correcting Babers’ testimony and acknowledging the files were previously sent but not properly processed.

“The bottom line is the system failed to hold dangerous drivers accountable,” Allen said. “So, where I believe they should have had licenses suspended, licenses revoked, that didn’t happen, and so I think the result is we got folks who should not have a license or shouldn’t be on the street that are.”

How many drivers that should have had their licenses revoked is unknown.

Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration launched a multi-agency investigation into what went wrong.

“Should that driver have had a license, if she didn’t have a license would she not have been in that car, no one really knows that,” she said.

“What we have to figure out when that communication was muddled, if there are other people whose licenses should be revoked, we are doing that work right now,” Bowser said.

A high-ranking D.C. official with knowledge of the investigation said the problem could go back as far as 2019, but Allen thinks it goes back even further.

“What’s clear to me, though, is there are people who have licenses right now that shouldn’t,” he said.

While it’s impossible to know if Walker would have still been behind the wheel if her license had been revoked, in court her lawyers noted that she had been in full compliance with the terms of her probation for those previous DUIs and had recently had the terms of her probation reduced to unsupervised, indicating she was complying with all the restrictions placed on her.