Officer pleads guilty after crash

An Anaheim police officer was sentenced to less than a year for crashing through a backyard fence in Huntington Beach while on four prescription drugs and two other incidents of driving under the influence.

Kevin Noel Schlueter, 37, of Costa Mesa, was sentenced to 10 months in jail Wednesday after pleading guilty to three counts of driving under the influence of drugs, all misdemeanors, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office. Schlueter will spend six of his 10 months in a residential drug treatment center.

Schlueter was driving along Oakridge Lane in Huntington Beach when he crashed his car through a backyard fence around 9:30 p.m. Jan. 21. He was off duty and in his own car at the time.

Schlueter sat in his car with the engine running until the Huntington Beach police got to the scene and arrested him.

He was on hydrocodone, hydromorphone, meprobamate and carisoprodol at the time of the crash.

Almost a year prior, Schlueter was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of prescription drugs on the 405 Freeway and again two months later in Costa Mesa where he crashed into four parked cars.

— Britney Barnes