Jill SwaffordAn Athens, Tennessee, city school principal was arrested for boating under the influence on Polk County’s Parksville Lake a couple of weekends ago and entered a conditional guilty plea in general sessions court last week that could allow her record to be cleared.
Ingleside Elementary School Principal Jill Lynne Swafford last week entered a conditional guilty plea to charges of BUI and reckless operation stemming from an arrest by a state wildlife official, according to Polk County General Sessions Court records. Swafford declined to comment when contacted Tuesday.
According to a warrant affidavit filed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, Swafford, 54, of Benton, Tennessee, was at the helm of a pontoon boat on Parksville Lake on Saturday, June 12, when TWRA officer Matthew Hammons made contact with her around 6:30 p.m. just outside the Lake Ocoee Marina.
Parksville Lake is the part of the reservoir nearest the Ocoee Dam on the west end of the Ocoee River Gorge in the Cherokee National Forest.
“Mrs. Swafford had an occupant riding outside the gunnels on [the] front of the pontoon boat with his feet hanging over the side between the pontoons,” Hammons wrote in his report. “As we approached the vessel, Mrs. Swafford stood up from the helm and walked to the back of the boat and sat down.”