SASCHA WIL­SON

Less than 24 hours af­ter lock­down re­stric­tions were im­posed in re­sponse to the spike in COVID-19 cas­es, a young man was ar­rest­ed for not on­ly breach­ing the cur­few but dri­ving dan­ger­ous­ly and dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

25-year-old An­to­nio Amichan of Gol­con­da Road, Gol­con­da, was slapped with $6,000 in fines af­ter he plead­ed guilty to the charges dur­ing a vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ance, to­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he was ar­rest­ed around 10:10 pm on Sun­day, along SS Erin Road, Debe.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, PC Ram­roop and PC Mo­ham­mad were on mo­bile pa­trol when they ob­served a ve­hi­cle speed­ing and swerv­ing on the road, caus­ing the of­fi­cer who was dri­ving the po­lice ve­hi­cle to take eva­sive ac­tion. The of­fi­cers caused the er­rat­ic ve­hi­cle to stop and ap­proached the dri­ver.

The dri­ver re­port­ed­ly ap­peared in­tox­i­cat­ed, and PC Mo­ham­mad ad­min­is­tered a breath­a­lyz­er test that record­ed a read­ing of 107 mi­cro­grammes. The le­gal lim­it is 35 mi­cro­grammes.

The man was charged with dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol, breach of cur­few and dan­ger­ous dri­ving.  On each charge, Se­nior Mag­is­trate Armi­na De­onar­i­nesingh fined him $2,000—or in de­fault, four months im­pris­on­ment. He was al­so dis­qual­i­fied from dri­ving for 12 months and giv­en one month to pay the fines.

The cur­few is from 9 pm to 5 am.  Any­one who breach­es the reg­u­la­tions un­der the State of Emer­gency is li­able to a fine of $250,000 and to six months im­pris­on­ment.