A Chippenham drink driver claims he was ‘experiencing depression on a scale he never imagined’ when he crashed into a car carrying a child passenger.
Timothy Griffin-McGill, 42, appeared before Swindon Magistrates’ Court charged with failing to stop after the scene of a road traffic collision and drink driving. He admitted the offences.
Crown prosecutor Kate Prince said the defendant, of Wessex Road, was on the wrong side of the road when crashed into the front of oncoming Ford Mondeo in Hungerdown Lane shortly after 3pm on 6 February this year.
The driver of the Ford, who was travelling with his 11-year-old son at the time, avoid injury when they were struck by the defendant’s BMW – which then sped off.
A witness to the collision followed the BMW, made a note of where it had parked and then returned the information to the victim. Police were informed and subsequently located Griffin-McGill.
On failing a roadside breath test, he was arrested and taken into custody. At the police station, he provided an evidential breathalyser reading of three times the drink-drive limit: 110 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The limit is 35.
Defending, Emma Hillier said her client’s actions were completely out of character. She said the defendant’s judgement was clouded due to the amount of alcohol he had consumed.
She told the court self-employed Griffin-McGill had “experienced depression on a scale never imagined” due to the coronavirus pandemic, which had contributed to reducing his income from web development work from £20,000 to just £5,000 a year.
He would usually spend three hours a day in the gym, but Ms Hillier said he was unable to do so due to Covid restrictions.
She told the court that her client usually drinks three or four times a year, but on the date of this incident has had been descending into a “dark cloud” and had drank to excess.
Ms Hillier confimed Griffin-McGill has not touched alchol since the incident and is back at the gym seven days a week. His car, which sustained £3,000 worth of damage, was written off following the collision.
Accepting that the child involved would have been “highly distressed”, magistrates fined him £640 for drink driving and £256 for failing to stop. The defendant was banned from driving for 24 months.
