By Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles city attorney’s office charged singer Bobby Brown on Wednesday with three misdemeanor counts following his drunken-driving arrest in the L.A. community of Reseda.
Brown faces three misdemeanor counts, include driving under the influence, driving with a blood-alcohol level above 0.08 percent and driving on a suspended license. Sources said Brown’s license had been suspended for the last year because he failed to appear in court in connection with a speeding ticket.
A source familiar with the case said the field sobriety test administered by the California Highway Patrol on Monday determined Brown was driving his White Mercedes GL 450 with a blood alcohol level of 0.12 percent versus the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
He faces a maximum of one year in county jail if convicted on all charges.
Officers pulled him over for talking on his cellphone but then administered a field sobriety test.
The arrest comes four days after the Los Angeles County coroner’s office released the results of its autopsy of Brown’s ex-wife, Whitney Houston.
Houston appears to have used cocaine “in the time period just immediately prior to her collapse in the bathtub at the hotel,” said L.A. County Chief Coroner Craig Harvey.
Houston, 48, was determined to have accidentally drowned Feb. 11 after an apparent heart episode with cocaine as contributing factor. Officials would not say how much of the drug was in her system.
But Harvey, the coroner’s operations chief, said the toxicology findings “suggested chronic usage” of the drug. Brown and Houston’s 14-year marriage was tarnished by drug abuse, Brown’s run-ins with the law and allegations of domestic abuse.
It became fodder for the tabloids and entertainment shows and for a year was on display in the reality show “Being Bobby Brown.”
The superstar singers met at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards and married three years later. Houston divorced Brown in 2007, winning custody of their daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown.
