FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – The mother of a Texas teenager who used an “affluenza” defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck has been released on bond.
Tonya Couch was released Thursday from the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth. She was fitted with an ankle monitor and released to home confinement. A judge also ordered her to take no drugs, not even vitamins or over-the-counter medications.
Couch faces money laundering and hindering apprehension charges at a Nov. 12 hearing.
The judge had ordered her arrest June 7 after she tested positive for methamphetamine, violating terms of her release.
She was charged in 2016 after she fled with son, Ethan, to Mexico in 2015. Ethan Couch was released on probation in March.
A psychologist at Ethan Couch’s 2013 trial blamed “affluenza,” or irresponsibly due to wealth, for a North Texas wreck that killed four.
