Stuart Galloway, 40, was a disqualified driver, had taken the vehicle without the owner’s consent, and was not covered by insurance. He admitted all matters when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court from custody, along with another of possessing 10 tablets of the class C drug Tramadol. He was jailed for eight months.
Prosecuting Advocate Phoebe Cobb told the court that in April Galloway had been ordered to perform 130 hours of community service as a direct alternative to four months in prison for similar offending.
One day in September his mother flew out of the island and left the keys in her car to a friend could collect it. Later that day Galloway was seen driving it on to North Beach. He went to pubs in town before returning to the vehicle at 1am. As he drove away he collided with a wall.
At 4.35am an anonymous caller to police reported that a blue Hyundai was parked against a kerb in Rue Jamouneau, Le Grande Bouet, and a leg was sticking out of the driver’s window. When a police officer arrived he had to wake the defendant. When the officer tried to remove the keys from the car it began to roll back and he had to tell Galloway to pull up the handbrake. He failed a roadside breath test and a reading in custody following his arrest showed 73mcg of alcohol per 100ml of breath, double the legal limit. The drugs were found in the vehicle.
Checks with the defendant’s mother confirmed that she had not given him permission to use her car.
In interview, Galloway said he could not remember a lot of what had happened and he did not know why he had done it. It was only the second time in his life that he had blacked out due to alcohol.
Defending, Advocate Samuel Steel said his client accepted that his offending was serious and that it was fortunate that nobody had got hurt. He had completed nearly 100 hours of his community service order and the time he had spent in custody had been a wake up call. He realised now that he should not self-medicate for back pain.
Judge Gary Perry said the defendant had committed almost identical offences in April and within a relatively short period had done the same again. Only a sentence of immediate custody would suffice.
He jailed him for two months, consecutive for both the disqualified driving and drink-driving matters, with licence suspensions of three years and four years concurrent respectively. Concurrent and lesser sentences were meted for the other matters.
The community service order was revoked and the four-month custodial penalty activated in its place to run consecutively, making the total prison sentence one of eight months.
