MAN FOUND DRUNK IN CAR

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 17

MAN FOUND DRUNK IN CAR

FINE OF £5 IMPOSED A man whose friends left him to “sleep it off” in his car, after taking away the ignition key, was told by Mr Rex C. Abernethy, S.M., in the Lyttelton Magistrate’s Court yesterday that he was extremely lucky. The action of his friends had probably saved- him from a severe penalty, and the cancellation of his licence, said the Magistrate. The defendant was Claude Foster Francis, aged 33, a shipping clerk, who was charged with being intoxicated while in charge of a motor-car in a part of the Lyttelton railway yard used for vehicular traffic. He pleaded guilty, and was fined £5 and ordered to pay medical expenses (£2 2s). Senior-Sergeant J. L. Graham said that at 2.45 a.m. yesterday. Constables A. Adams and C. A. G. Morrison found the defendant asleep in his car, which was parked off the roadway on the waterfront. The constables roused him and suggested that he go into a nearby office, where he worked. Francis refused to do so, and was arrested. He was examined at the police station at 3.15 a.m. by Dr. P. A. M. Heath, who pronounced him unfit to drive. The ignition key was not in the car, and the police learned that friends had taken it away and had locked it in the office. The defendant told the Court that he had worked until 9 f).m., and had then stayed on to enable members of the Royal Marine Band to store their instrument cases in the office. While waiting, he had had several beers. His friends had decided that it would be better for him to sleep in the car than in the office, and had taken away the ignition key. • The Magistrate said he would give the defendant the benefit of the doubt and assume that he would not have been able to drive the car. The defendant had his friends to thank for that, said the Magistrate.