Nissan Oxford driver drank Guinness before roundabout crash
Factory worker Richard Walton was behind the wheel of his partner’s Nissan Micra on the evening of January 22 when he drove through a red light at Kennington roundabout and into the path of the Mercedes E220, sending the car spinning across the road.
The 45-year-old provisional licence holder, who in 2005 twice knocked a pursuing police officer off his bike in a bid to evade arrest that saw him jailed for 10 months, initially tried to blame the passenger who was passed out on the back seat.
Suspicious police officers called to the scene breathalysed Walton at the roadside, finding that he was one-and-a-half times the legal limit.
Taken to Abingdon[1] police station, he had 49mcgs of alcohol in his system – still over the legal limit of 35mcgs.
Prosecuting, Laura Hoyano told Oxford[3] Crown Court on Monday (September 18) that the defendant was said to have drunk ‘three to four cans of Guinness’ before getting behind the wheel of the Nissan.
Although he had identified the out-cold backseat passenger as the driver, he later came clean and admitted that he was the one driving.
Interviewed by the police and, later, by a probation officer tasked with penning a pre-sentence report, he had apologised for his actions.
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However, Prof Hoyano said it was an aggravating feature of the case that the blame was ‘wrongly placed on others’, albeit temporarily.
She added that the defendant was ‘driving without glasses, which he required’.
Walton, of Glanville Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty at the first hearing to dangerous driving, drink driving and driving without a licence.
He had a large number of previous convictions, the court heard, including a record for driving with excess alcohol that went back to 1999.
He was jailed in 2018 for attacking an ex-partner.
Mitigating, Dana Bilan asked the judge to spare her client an immediate prison sentence.
He had been able to hold down a job for the first time in his life, and was regularly alcohol tested before factory shifts.
He had a difficult childhood, growing up with an alcoholic father, and had struggled with drink himself.
Among the character references written on his behalf was one from the backseat passenger at whom Walton had pointed the finger of blame.
In it, he said he got in the car knowing Walton had been drinking.
Sentencing, Judge Maria Lamb said: “Notwithstanding his apparent forgiveness of you, the court must deal with you for what is a serious offence.”
She told Walton, who was seated in the dock wearing a white shirt, a salt-and-pepper beard and a pair of spectacles, that she was ‘just persuaded’ she could suspend the prison sentence.
Judge Lamb sentenced him to 14 months imprisonment suspended for two years.
Richard Walton outside Oxford Crown Court Picture: Oxford Mail (Image: Oxford Mail)
As part of the order, he must do 200 hours of unpaid work, up to 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days and wear an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag for 120 days.
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Noting the booze ban would cover Christmas, Judge Lamb told the defendant: “What jollification you may be indulging in over that period will not involve alcohol.”
He must pay £250 compensation to the Mercedes driver and £425 in costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The judge banned him from driving for three years.
References
- ^ Abingdon (www.oxfordmail.co.uk)
- ^ Jail for Kennington man who knocked out his partner’s teeth (www.oxfordmail.co.uk)
- ^ Oxford (www.oxfordmail.co.uk)
- ^ https://t.co/X7IOnawrD3 (t.co)
- ^ pic.twitter.com/LQlTkCrm8o (t.co)
- ^ September 13, 2023 (twitter.com)
- ^ Network Rail bosses backtrack on pledge to reopen Botley Road over winter (www.oxfordmail.co.uk)
- ^ Click here to sign up to the Crime and Court newsletter (Image: Newsquest) (www.oxfordmail.co.uk)