A man caught drug driving in Trowbridge on Christmas Day has been banned from the roads.
Jonathan Grimes, 46, appeared at Swindon Magistrates’ Court this morning (11 September) where he entered a guilty plea to the offence.
Keith Ballinger, prosecuting, said the defendant, of Studley Rise, was pulled over by police officers on patrol over concerns he was speeding in a 30mph zone.
Having stopped Grimes in his Peugeot Expert van in Barton Lodge at around midday on 25 December 2020, they performed a drugs wipe.
The result was positive for cocaine and he was arrested. In custody, he provided a sample of blood for evidential analysis.
It returned a result of 71 micrograms of benzoylecgonine, a major metabolite of cocaine, per litre of blood. The legal limit is 50 micrograms.
The court heard Grimes was convicted of another count of drug driving dating back to May 2020 on 21 May this year. He was disqualified for 12 months.
Duty solicitor Richard Griffith said his client’s working life as a builder ended in May, following his last ban. He added that Grimes income is now “zero”.
Magistrates fined him £120 and ordered him to pay £85 costs and a £34 victim surcharge along with another one-year disqualification.
