Witnesses say a Richmond, Virginia, police officer helped his daughter avoid drunken driving charges early Sunday morning after she nearly struck some pedestrians after running two stop signs.

Residents had gone outside about 12:30 a.m. after someone struck a parked SUV when they saw another driver speed through a stop sign without slowing down.

“We were forced to flee the street towards the sidewalk as we realized that this was not another cop rushing to the scene, but a driver who has clearly failed to notice a stop sign, an automobile accident, and flashing police lights, and is headed straight for a head-on collision with the wrecked SUV,” said witness S. Preston Duncan, of Church Hill, in a Facebook post shared by Richmond police.

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He said the driver slammed on the brakes of her car, swerved around the damaged vehicles, and nearly struck a parked police cruiser with its sirens flashing.

“She was crying hysterically, hitting her head on the steering wheel,” Duncan said. “At one point she got out of the car and spilled the entire contents of her purse on the street.”

Police repeatedly asked the woman to get back into her car, and Duncan said he and least one other person heard one of the officer’s agree to speak to the driver’s father on a cell phone if she called him.

About 30 minutes later, Duncan said, a man and woman arrived in an SUV.

Duncan’s roommate had been recording cell phone video of the situation, he said, but the man in the SUV told him to turn off the camera.

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The woman who had nearly struck the pedestrians also screamed at the roommate to stop recording video, and they briefly argued.

Witnesses said the driver was never given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test and allowed to leave with the man and woman in the SUV.

Police said the man who arrived in the SUV was not a Richmond police officer, but they did not say who he was.

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Richmond police are conducting an internal investigation of the incident to determine why the woman was allowed to leave without undergoing sobriety tests.

Watch this video report posted online by WTVR-TV:

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[Image: ‘Angry Woman Driver Stuck In Traffic Jam’ via Shutterstock]