A MOTORIST who drove through town at 80mph through a 30mph zone, crashed into another car injuring the man inside, and then fled the scene has been spared jail.
Pedro Nuno Rodrigues Caires sobbed throughout yesterday’s sentencing hearing in the Royal Court, as the details of the incident on the night of 9 July last year were read out.
Despite the seriousness of the offence, Jurats ultimately decided to sentence Caires to 312 hours of community service – in part because of the lengthy delay in dealing with the case.
Crown Advocate Paul Lee, prosecuting, said that the 39-year-old father had been drinking at a family gathering at The Royal Yacht and decided to drive home.
CCTV footage from 9.50pm that night showed his black BMW being driven at between 77mph and 83mph through a 30mph zone.
The crown advocate said Caires crashed into a stationary Toyota Yaris in Queen’s Road, pushing the car against a granite wall, causing it to rotate.
The man inside lost consciousness for a short time and suffered some minor injuries and was taken to hospital for 48 hours for observation. Caires ran off in the direction of Springfield and “made no attempt to call the emergency services”, Advocate Lee said. “He fled the scene because he knew he was drunk.
“It was more by luck than judgment that there were no more serious injuries, or even death.”
A blood test several hours later showed 83 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80 milligrams.
However, some of the alcohol would have left Caires’s system in the hours between the crash and the blood test, the court heard, and Advocate Lee said a “back calculation” showed Caires would have had a level of around 119 milligrams at the time.
Caires pleaded guilty to causing injury by dangerous driving, driving while over the legal alcohol limit and failing to stop and report an accident.
The prosecution recommended three years in prison and a four-year driving ban.
Advocate Lucy Marks, defending, pointed out that Caires had been driving for 20 years without previous offences and said it was “an isolated incident”. She added: “He apologises unreservedly. He is constantly tearful and feels incredibly bad.”
Advocate Marks said Caires did not drink often and had misjudged the amount he had on the night of the incident.
Of his leaving the scene, she said: “He was in a state of shock. He was simply not thinking straight. There was no attempt to evade capture.”
And she said that when the police arrived he immediately admitted the offence.
The advocate said that Caires had a partner and two children and would lose his job and home if he was sent to prison.
She also criticised the long delay in dealing with the offence. She said: “It’s almost a year and a half later that he finds himself before the court for sentencing.
The Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, said the Jurats agreed that there had been “a wholly inexcusable delay” and concluded: “The available mitigation enables us to take the exceptional course of imposing a sentence of community service.”
Caires was also banned from driving for two and a half years and must retake the driving test after the ban has elapsed.
Jurats Christensen and Opferman were sitting.
