Sascha Wil­son

A Cepep work­er had to dip in­to his Christ­mas bud­get yes­ter­day to avoid spend­ing the next three months in jail on a drunk-dri­ving charge. Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, 48, was or­dered to pay a $5,000 fine forth­with af­ter he plead­ed guilty be­fore San Fer­nan­do Traf­fic Court mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo to dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.Mo­hammed, 48, who has nev­er owned a dri­ver's per­mit, plead­ed guilty to a to­tal of sev­en road traf­fic charges.

The of­fences stem from an in­ci­dent last Fri­day in Debe.Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Rus­sell Ra­moutar said around 3.20 pm Cpl Rudranath Ram­phal was on pa­trol along Cuchawan Trace when he saw a car head­ing south along the SS Erin Road col­lide with a parked van.The po­lice gave chase af­ter the car did not stop. It even­tu­al­ly stopped along Lal­be­har­ry Trace.

When Ram­phal re­quest­ed Mo­hammed's dri­ving doc­u­ments, Mo­hammed said: "Boss, I don't have none."The of­fi­cer asked him if he had been drink­ing af­ter he caught a whiff of al­co­hol on his breath.Mo­hammed said he had about three beers ear­li­er.He was tak­en to the Debe Po­lice post where breathal­yser tests record­ed read­ings of 72 and 74 mi­cro­grammes re­spec­tive­ly. The le­gal lim­it is 35 mcg.

Mo­hammed al­so ad­mit­ted he had not asked In­di­ra Ram­nar­ine if he could bor­row her car.He said he was "hang­ing out" at a Christ­mas par­ty, where he had a "few drinks in meh head," when his moth­er called and asked him to get some car­pet for her.He said he made a bad de­ci­sion to go for the car­pet and to use Ram­nar­ine's car with­out her per­mis­sion. He of­fered to fix Ram­nar­ine's car and the van.

On the charge of dri­ving with­out in­sur­ance and a dri­ver's per­mit he was fined $2,000 or will serve three months in prison and $500 or one month in prison re­spec­tive­ly.He was al­lowed a month to pay the fines.The charges of fail­ing to pro­duce a dri­ver's per­mit and in­sur­ance were dis­missed be­cause the mag­is­trate said a per­son could not pro­duce some­thing he did not own.

The pros­e­cu­tor asked for sen­tenc­ing on charges of caus­ing dam­age to prop­er­ty and dri­ving the car with­out the own­er's con­sent to be de­ferred for the po­lice to as­cer­tain the cost of dam­age.Mo­hammed was placed on $5,000 bail and the mat­ter was ad­journed to Jan­u­ary 6. A sum­mons al­so was is­sued for Ram­nar­ine to at­tend court.