Mother of ‘affluenza’ Texas teen posts bond, release set for Tuesday

A judge reduced Tonya Couch’s $1 million bond to $75,000 after she appeared at a Fort Worth court Monday.

Couch, 48, must wear a monitoring bracelet on her ankle while she awaits further court proceedings, Tarrant County, Texas, Sheriff Dee Anderson said in a tweet.

Authorities believe she and her 18-year-old son, Ethan Couch, fled the state in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in the 2013 wreck that killed four people.

Tonya Couch’s bond was lowered from $1 million to $75,000.

Couch did not say a word as she was escorted down the street by deputies, on her way to get that ankle monitor. He said Tonya Couch has already demonstrated a willingness to defy probation restrictions.

Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson previously said Couch is a proven flight risk.

After leaving jail, Couch is expected to live with her other son, Stephen McWilliams, who also testified in court on Monday.

“This is way different than a typical hindering apprehension case, the allegation is that she actually carted someone across the border”, the prosecutor said. The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation drew ridicule.

In early December, it was reported that Ethan Couch and his mother had gone missing in the wake of a video of the teen drinking beer, breaking his probation conditions, surfacing on the Internet. Authorities say they were able to track them after the two ordered a pizza. They were captured later that month in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

A day after the video was seen on the Internet, she withdrew $30,000 from the bank and informed her estranged husband, who owns a metal works business, that he would never see his son again, an arrest affidavit said.

Ethan Couch was 16 and driving at three times the legal intoxication limit for adult drivers when he rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people trying to help stranded motorists on the side of a North Texas road. Even more important to MADD officials, the judge could also extend his probation beyond his 19th birthday, putting Couch under the threat of a much harsher sentence if he were to ever again be found in violation.