A mother who let her 7-year-old son drive her home has been jailed.
Police were alerted when a neighbour spotted the lad driving through their mobile home park in Fairbanks, Alaska, with mother Karen Koch slumped in the front of the car.
Troopers turned up as the youngster was getting out of the car, and found the woman asleep, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
Court records said she woke up a few minutes later to tell officers she could not see any problem with her son driving the car.
Koch, who has three previous convictions for drunk-driving, admitted reckless endangerment in exchange for the prosecution dropping a charge of allowing an unauthorised person to drive.
According to Koch's defence counsel, she had in fact been sober when she let the little boy drive home - but had then gone inside her house to drink alcohol while the seven-year-old listened to music in the car.
Public defender Katie Kelliher told the court that it was at this point that officers arrived.
"She misunderstood what she could and couldn't do with allowing her child to drive," Kelliher added.
Koch was sentenced to a six-month spell in jail, though all but 20 days of this were suspended.
She's also been told to clock in to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times a week over the next six months.
District Court Judge Raymond Funk told Koch it was "just horrific" to say she had not seen any problem with letting her son drive.
