Domestic row results in drink driving sentence

Tuesday 31 January 2017

Jersey's Magistrate's Court has sentenced a 45-year-old man to 110 hours of community service and a 30-month ban for drink driving - he told the court he got in his car to escape a row with his wife.

Alan Fraser Ross was stopped by police between Bel Royal and First Tower on Sunday night.

It emerged in court that they had received a call from his wife alleging Mr Ross was driving after he'd been drinking. Initially, he refused to provide a breath specimen, although he admitted to having consumed a “...large amount of alcohol," and he later told officers, “I’m not going to blow into the machine, I am over the limit."

Although the police officers tried to explain the procedure to him, Mr Ross still refused to comply confessing to the officers “I know what the result will be, I would rather not find out."

Mr Ross told the court that he had been out for lunch with his wife earlier that day. But the pair got into a bad argument around 23.30,  and Mr Ross says he chose to walk away from the worsening row,  and locked himself in the car. But he says his wife followed, at which point he decided to stay overnight in the Grand Hotel.

He was then stopped by the Police on his way to the hotel, after his wife alerted them to his condition. 

Magistrate Bridget Shaw stated that he was, “...clearly trying to do the right thing by removing himself from a violent situation,” but that, “...he shouldn’t have been in his car."  

As it was Mr Ross’s first conviction of this type, and given that he has no drinking habit, the Magistrate sentenced him to 110 hours of community service instead of 5 months in custody. He has also been banned from driving for 30 months and will have to take a driving test again at the end of that period.