On January 12, 2025, Whitman County Sheriff's Deputy Petersen stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation. The driver was a 19-year-old woman, who was driving a friend's vehicle, and did not have her license with her. When asked, the woman denied consuming any alcohol. However, Deputy Petersen conducted the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) test on the woman while she remained in the vehicle and her eyes indicated that she had consumed alcohol. She was asked to step out the vehicle in order to perform the full battery of standardized field sobriety tests. This included a portable breath test, where the result was 0.088% BAC. The woman was arrested and was transported to the Washington State University Police Department for an evidential breath test. While waiting for the breath test, the woman engaged in a lively and sarcastic conversation with Deputy Petersen, where she called him numerous profanities and insisted that he was ruining her weekend. She was ultimately transported to the Whitman County Jail, where she was booked for being under 21 years of age and driving after consuming alcohol.