One by one, the four Chicago Police Department officers called to testify Monday in the DUI trial of Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele pointed her out in a drab Richard J. Daley Center courtroom.
It was Steele who smelled of alcohol after hitting two cars in the November 2024 crash, who refused to follow their orders and appeared disoriented, they recalled.
“She looked like she was under the influence,” Sgt. Tewelde Tesfai told the court. “She had red, bloodshot, glassy eyes.”
Steele’s long-awaited trial finally began Monday, but included few new revelations. Instead, prosecutors questioned the police who investigated the crash and arrested Steele, then backed up their testimony by playing already released body-worn camera footage.
In the videos, reported by the Tribune shortly after the arrest, Steele touted her status as a Cook County politician and repeatedly rejected commands.
“I’m an elected official,” she said as one officer ordered her to step out of the car.
Steele’s day began in a run-of-the-mill traffic courtroom, where around a dozen cases got terse updates before her own was sent for a bench trial in another room.
The trial began with Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Boersma telling Judge Donald J. Soriano that Steele’s attorneys had contacted a physician from the emergency room Steele was taken to the night of her arrest and warned her, “If you testify, your testimony could lead to a malpractice suit.”
Steele’s attorneys argued they had not been properly included on a subpoena for the physician, a witness for the state. Soriano denied their motion to block the practitioner’s testimony, which did not occur Monday.
In a brief opening statement, prosecutor Riley Mullen told the judge that Steele “made a choice” the day of the crash.
“A choice to drink, and a choice to drive,” he said.
Steele’s attorney made no opening of their own, and the commissioner did not speak in court for the first day of the trial, expected to last two days.
But her statements, captured in an array of video clips shown in court, were the focus of testimony. She joined her attorneys and Soriano in the empty jury box as the videos played, sitting upright and still.
Officer Ricardo Fernandez, now retired, told the court Steele appeared “confused” and “disoriented” when he first arrived at the scene.
Tesfai told the court Steele repeatedly refused to follow his order when he told her to step out of the car for a field sobriety test. When she finally exited after calling her attorney and being told by him to do so, she used the car to support herself, he added.
Body-camera footage shown in court depicted Steele standing in the Ashland Avenue median, cars driving by, as police arrived. She at first rejected Fernandez when he asked for her driver’s license, instead repeatedly insisting he speak with her attorney, whom she had called.
“Ask him,” she said. “I’ll wait for him. … I’m just saying I’ll wait for my friend.”
“Ma’am, you don’t need to make this more complicated than it already is,” the officer told her in the video.
She then struggled to open the glove box where the insurance information for the car, which she said belonged to a friend, was stored. “It’s a fancy car,” she told the officer.
Body-camera footage showed her moments later declining an ambulance.
“I’m good. Are you good?” she told an officer. “I’m just (expletive) with you.”
On video and in court, officers said Steele smelled of alcohol and added that they found a bottle of wine in a bag on the front passenger-side floorboard of the white sedan she drove.
When Steele refused a field sobriety test after finally stepping out of her car, police placed her under arrest, video showed.
“That’s weird,” Steele said after the cuffs were placed on her.
“You should have Ubered, taxied,” Tesfai said, the body-camera footage showed.
Police released Steele from handcuffs when she said she would take the sobriety test, the footage showed. She then asked for an ambulance, complaining of a head injury, and was transported to a hospital.
Officer Danny Wu testified that Steele had not initially complained of injuries. He said Steele cried inside the ambulance. At the hospital, she told Yu, “You have a small penis,” he testified.
The last testimony of the day came from Dylan Groth, who goes by Dylan Roh, who recalled seeing Steele crash outside his Ashland Avenue home.
When he approached the white car and told Steele to roll down her window, he said, she repeatedly requested he leave her alone, insisting she was fine. She became even more aggravated, Groth said, when he attempted to take photos of her license plate.
After noticing her car smelled like alcohol and that she had never shifted her car to park, Groth decided to contact the police.
“It wasn’t even the smell that threw me off,” Groth said. “It was how defensive and aggressive she was right off the bat.”
