A WOMAN who was more than four times the legal blood-alcohol limit will stay in prison until November after she was sentenced in Orange Local Court on Thursday.
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Abigail Ann Astill was so drunk she drove over a median strip, drove into a keep left sign and drove over a nature strip.
The 40-year-old was already on suspended jail sentences for assault charges when she drove with a blood-alcohol reading of 0.243 on Sunday, May 25, at around 10pm.
A witness saw the Autumn Street resident veer onto the wrong side of the road in Peisley Street and drive over a nature strip.
The witness then phoned police and followed Astill’s car.
After driving several hundreds of metres, she eventually pulled over in Sale Street and left her car.
Police found her a short time later, before she tried to run away from them.
She was dishevelled, with “disarranged clothes” and “well-affected” by alcohol, according to police.
She told police she had been drinking “goon”.
She was arrested and has been in jail since that date.
Her solicitor Bob Lulham, asked magistrate Bruce Williams to consider not enacting the suspended sentences which would have sent her to jail for 12 months, and to consider sentencing her to six months in custody and six-months on parole.
“She has acknowledged that alcohol has affected her health and well-being,” Mr Lulham said.
Mr Williams agreed with Mr Lulham and said he hoped when she was released from custody she would do something to address her alcohol problem.
“It’s always distressing when someone’s life gets to this point,” he said.
She was also disqualified from driving for five years.