Police found a baby in a drink driver’s car when they pulled her over in Corsham.
Swindon Academy math teacher Lindsay Melville-Bates pleaded guilty to driving whilst over the prescribed alcohol limit when she appeared before magistrates today (1 September).
The defendant, of Freestone Way, Corsham, was caught driving erratically and swerving across the A4 at just before 1am on 23 May this year.
A police officer on patrol in the area witnessed the manner of driving and she was subsequently pulled over.
It was immediately apparent that 37-year-old Melville-Bates had a one-year-old baby in the vehicle, a Peugeot, with her at the time.
Failing a roadside breath test, she was arrested and taken to custody. On an evidential breathalyser machine, she blew a reading of 63 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath – the legal limit is 35.
“The circumstances of that night are that she’s gone to a friend’s house with no intention of driving home that night at all, she was intending to stay the night and had put her daughter down to sleep before having a couple of drinks with her friend”, her solicitor Ms Morgan of Millar Solicitors told the court.
She continued: “However, her friend’s brother-in-law shows up at the property and he’s aggressive, he’s abusive and says ‘if you were a bloke I’d smash your face in’, and it is rather not a nice incident.
“Miss Melville-Bates feels threatened by him and the only thing she is thinking of is to grab her daughter and leave. It is accepted that this does not fall within the special reasons category as an emergency situation.”
District judge Joanna Dickens imposed a 20-month driving ban and ordered Melville-Bates to pay a £250 fine, £85 costs and a £34 victim surcharge.
