Mom accused of hiking drunk, falling in river with 5-year-old

A Salt Lake City woman who allegedly fell into a river with her 5-year-old son during a drunken hiking trip "just wanted to be the cool mom," according to criminal charges.

Police were alerted to possible trouble just before midnight on June 29, when the woman's mother reported her daughter and two grandsons, 12 and 5, had left for a hike at Tanner Park at about 8 p.m. and had not yet returned, investigators wrote in charges filed Tuesday.

Officers searched the park for an hour and were in the parking lot when someone shouted that the woman and her children had been helped out of the river by a passerby.

The mother, 31, admitted that she had been drinking and that her 12-year-old had been carrying her vodka bottle in his backpack on the hike to Suicide Rock. The boys said their mother was holding onto the 5-year-old "when she tripped, fell into the river and dragged [the child] in with her," police wrote. The 5-year-old was cold and wet and had a scrape on his arm.

The woman admitted she was on probation for a DUI and "stated that she just wanted to be the cool mom," police wrote.

She was charged with intoxication and two counts of reckless endangerment, all misdemeanors.