A learner-driver who crashed into a concrete island at the intersection of Hill Street and Margaret Street and rolled the car while high-range drink diving, has been sentenced.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
According to police facts, Kavana Christodoulou, 20, of Hill Street, was driving a Ford hatchback south on Hill Street, without a supervising driver, at 3.35am when he hit the centre island and the car rolled on to the driver’s side.
Christodoulou was trapped in the car but police said “several intoxicated passers by” rolled the car back onto its wheels.
The driver’s door was damaged when the car rolled and Christodoulou was still behind the wheel when police arrived and he managed to force the door open.
He tested positive to a breath test and was arrested and taken back to Orange Police Station for breath analysis where he returned a high-range drink driving reading of 0.153.
He told police he’d had five schooners of beer and three or four cans of bourbon and cola between 4pm and 3am.
Magistrate Clare Farnan sentenced him in Orange Local Court on Monday.
She placed him on a 12-month good behaviour bond for the high-range drink driving offence, fined him $600, disqualified his driver’s licence for six months and ordered him to have an interlock device fitted in his car for two years.
For driving as an unaccompanied learner, he was fined $100 and disqualified from driving for three months.
“You are only a very young man, and you are a very young man who had a collision when you didn’t have a full licence, and you had a very high alcohol level, and you didn’t have a supervising driver because of course no one would supervise someone with such a high [alcohol] level ,” Ms Farnan said.
“If you don’t turn your life around in terms of drinking and driving then you will have a rocky road ahead.”
Christodoulou’s solicitor Paul Longhurst said there was no dispute with the police facts, his client pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and has made a turn-around and become more responsible since he first met him.