A 31-year-old man charged with mid-range drink driving after getting into a fender-bender outside of a local pub on Australia Day, was sentenced in Mudgee Local Court on Wednesday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mitch Donovan Gibbons of Hadabob Road, Frog Rock, was placed on a six-month conditional release order and disqualified for two months to be followed by a 12-month interlock period.
At about 10pm on the evening of Saturday, January 26, 2019, Gibbons turned right onto Market Street and collided with a vehicle that was reverse parking on the opposite side of the road.
Police patrolling the CBD spotted the crashed vehicles blocking the road and attended the scene.
Gibbons returned a blood alcohol level of 0.133.
His solicitor, Simon Flynn, told the court that it was a minor accident and that the other driver was reversing a long way back to the parking spot.
Magistrate David Day said that this was probably fortunate considering the rural location of his home.
"Your client didn't go for a drive, which is good because at 0.133 he might've found a tree," he said. "Although one could take the cosmological view that if he left the pub earlier he wouldn't have had so many drinks and wouldn't have been charged."
The driver of a vehicle that flipped while performing 'donuts', trapping a man underneath it, at Rylstone in June last year, was sentenced in Lithgow Local Court.
Lachlan Thomas Steinwede, 21, from Lindfield, pleaded guilty to mid-range drink driving and dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and was disqualified for 18 months, placed on a 10 month intensive correction order and ordered to undertake 150 hours of community service.
The court heard a group had been enjoying a weekend dirt-biking near Rylstone, staying at the caravan park. After an evening at the Rylstone Hotel, with more drinks back at the caravan park, the group decided to go for a ride in a Mitsubishi dual cab ute.
According to documents presented to the court, the man who had initially been driving called out a warning as Steinwede performed donuts, warning that the vehicle was going too fast. He pushed the other person travelling on the tray off the ute and then jumped as well.
The vehicle flipped and the man was unable to get clear. The ute ended up on top of him and he was trapped. He was freed by emergency services and flown to Bathurst hospital. Steinwede returned a blood alcohol level of 0.116.
