Sen. Seymour’s Son Held in Felony Drunk Driving Case

U.S. Sen. John Seymour’s 24-year-old son, Shad Edward Seymour, is being held in San Joaquin County Jail on felony auto theft and drunk driving charges.

California Highway Patrol spokesman Bob Whitmire said Seymour was arrested in Anaheim on Thursday on a warrant issued after he failed to appear in Lodi Municipal Court for an April, 1990, incident in which he was found unconscious in the driver’s seat of a car that had stopped in a traffic lane.

Whitmire said the car belonged to a friend of Seymour. The friend had refused him permission to drive it and had reported it stolen 90 minutes earlier, Whitmire said, and a breath test found that Seymour had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20, more than double the legal limit of 0.08.

The drunk driving charge was a felony because Seymour had three previous convictions, Whitmire said.

Sen. Seymour, in a telephone interview with the Stockton Record, said that his son has battled alcohol problems since high school and that he had sent him without success to treatment and counseling programs.

He said his son, who is being held in lieu of $20,000 bail pending a May 21 hearing, will be represented by a public defender because the family had made it clear after past incidents that he must take responsibility for himself.

“I told him a couple of years ago that until he was ready to face the problem that he’s got with alcohol, there’s nothing I can do for him, that he’s on his own. . . . I pray now is the time he faces up to his problem,” the senator said.