Sascha Wil­son

One of the dri­vers in­volved in the ac­ci­dent which claimed the life of An­drew Ed­wards, 20, has been fined $4,500 for drunk dri­ving.Chem­i­cal en­gi­neer Dar­ill Pow­der, 47, was fined yes­ter­day af­ter Mag­is­trate Na­tal­ie Diop re­fused to al­low him to change his plea to not guilty.The mag­is­trate, pre­sid­ing in the Point Fortin court, al­so re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion by the State to stay his sen­tence as the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions moves to charge him with caus­ing death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving.

Pow­der, who was al­so in­jured in the crash, had plead­ed guilty on No­vem­ber 11 to dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.The de­tails of the ac­ci­dent were not re­vealed in court, but court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Jit­mans­ingh in­formed the mag­is­trate that some­one died.The fa­tal ac­ci­dent took place on No­vem­ber 10 on the South­ern Main Road, La Brea.

Jit­mans­ingh said when cor­po­ral Mal­oney spoke with Pow­der he had a strong al­co­hol odour on his breath and his speech was slurred. Pow­der was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the po­lice sta­tion where the first breathal­yser test record­ed a score of 80 mi­cro­grammes.The sec­ond test record­ed a read­ing of 74 mcg. The le­gal lim­it is 35 mcg per 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath.Pow­der, who did not have an at­tor­ney then, claimed he had some drinks at a work-re­lat­ed func­tion, but he did not re­alise he was over the lim­it.

The mag­is­trate grant­ed him $50,000 own bail and de­ferred sen­tenc­ing. But, when Pow­der re­turned to court on No­vem­ber 14, he was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Cedric Nep­tune, who said Pow­der want­ed to change his plead to not guilty.Both the state and de­fence at­tor­neys agreed that the mag­is­trate had a dis­cre­tion to al­low a change of plea, but that dis­cre­tion has to be ex­er­cised spar­ing­ly.In her rul­ing on Fri­day, Diop said Pow­der was un­equiv­o­cal in his plea and did not ap­pear not to un­der­stand what a guilty plea meant.

Nep­tune then asked the mag­is­trate to re­ject the State's re­quest for a stay of sen­tence, deem­ing it in­ap­pro­pri­ate. He said no li­a­bil­i­ty has been as­cribed to his client for the ac­ci­dent, which is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Ask­ing for le­nien­cy, Nep­tune said his client, apart from this in­ci­dent, is a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen and the fa­ther of four chil­dren. Nep­tune said Pow­der has worked at Tuck­er En­er­gy Ser­vices for over 20 years and had strong ties to the com­mu­ni­ty.

The mag­is­trate or­dered Pow­der to pay the fine in a day or serve sev­en months' im­pris­on­ment with hard labour.