A Marengo woman already sentenced to prison for driving drunk a fifth time, pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving drunk a sixth.
Kathie Zaremba, 62, was charged with the sixth DUI in January while on pretrial release on the fifth offense, according to criminal complaints filed in the McHenry County court.
She was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison Wednesday after entering a guilty plea to aggravated driving under the influence with five priors, a Class X felony.
In January, while on pretrial release and in the county’s special DUI court program, Zaremba was arrested along East Grant Highway in Marengo after “crashing her vehicle into a ditch, striking a water shutoff valve, and subsequently driving through a Taco Bell parking lot before stopping,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to discharge her from DUI court.
The latest prison term will run concurrently with the seven years she was sentenced to in March for the fifth conviction of aggravated driving under the influence with four past violations, Class X felony, records show.
Other DUI offenses occurred in 1991 and 1999 in Cook County, 2002 in DuPage County and March 2024 in McHenry County, three days before being charged in her fifth DUI offense, court records show.
Zaremba is required to serve half of each sentence followed by three years of mandatory supervised release. She is receiving credit for 136 days in the county jail, according to the sentencing order signed by Judge Mark Gerhardt.
