Drove home while five times over the limit

Wednesday 29 July 2020

A 50-year-old motorist who was seen swerving around corners, mounting the pavement and driving on the wrong side of the road in the middle of the day whilst drunk has been sent to jail and disqualified from driving.

Uvis Berzins was sentenced to six months in prison and has been taken off the roads for the next five years.

Berzins was reported to Guernsey Police in September last year, while driving from his work in Pitronnerie Road to his home in Collings Road.

An off-duty officer, who had been driving behind him, made the call at around 11:45 in the morning after watching the defendant swerve onto the wrong side of the road while going round a blind corner, mount the pavement and stop multiple times for no apparent reason.

The officer followed Berzins to his home address and went inside, before being joined shortly afterwards by uniformed officers.

A roadside breath test was taken, which came back positive, and the defendant was arrested and taken to the police station.

At first, he told police he had only drunk "one or two" ciders since returning home from his shift at work, however, he produced a reading of 175 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath - five times over the 35mcg limit. 

Pictured: Berzins has been sent to Les Nicolles Prison for six months. 

Last month, Berzins went on trial in the Royal Court after pleading not guilty, claiming that he had consumed around 600ml of vodka in the 25 minutes between getting home and the police arriving. 

The Jurats rejected Berzins' not guilty plea by 7 votes to 2, and he was sentenced in Guernsey's Royal Court yesterday. 

Defence Advocate Phoebe Cobb said her client was a hard-working man who did two jobs so that he could afford to support his family back in Latvia. 

She said Berzins was "a family-oriented man", and had received some bad news from back home before drinking and driving. 

It was his first offence in 18 years of living and working in Guernsey, while he had an "impeccable" 28-year clean record of driving convictions before last year's offence, which supported the Probation Officer's view that he is of a low-risk of re-offending. 

"He understands he has to be punished but clearly it will have a huge impact on his employment," said Advocate Cobb, as she handed out some work references describing Berzins as a "well-respected" and "hard-working" member of staff.

Judge Russell Finch said those characteristics were in his favour.

Pictured: Breath tests can be carried out at the roadside and/or back at the police station, and it's the lowest reading that counts. 

However, Berzins was significantly over the limit and he was fortunate that his actions had not injured anyone. 

"The reading here, we stress, was very high. Your mode of driving at lunchtime was very dangerous to other road users. It was lucky that someone on the highway or pavement was not seriously injured or worse."

"It was almost as bad as it could get without misfortune occurring to innocent road users," said Judge Finch.

"A long disqualification is needed to protect the public."

Berzins, who has been on conditional bail since the offence, has been sent to prison for six months and disqualified from driving for five years. 

Pictured top: Guernsey's Royal Court.