The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A man convicted of death by dangerous driving after leaving his 18-year-old friend for dead following an accident has been jailed for a second time for seven more driving related offences.
Jay Jordan Gilbert, 25, of Allison Avenue, Holbeach admitted two offences of disqualified driving, one of driving with excess alcohol, careless driving, failing to stop after an accident, two offences of driving without insurance and one of possessing cannabis.
Prosecuting, Marie Stace said that in the first incident, at 4pm on June 14, he was seen driving a Ford Focus in Penny Gardens, Kirton and failed a breath test, with a reading of 44 microgrammes, the legal limit being 35.
She said that when he was arrested he handed a small amount of cannabis to the officers.
Ms Stace said that while he was on bail for these offences, on June 28 at 4.45pm, he was involved in a collision in a Vauxhall Corsa he was driving when he rounded a bend in Hurdletree Bank, Whaplode St Catherines and crashed into a telegraph pole.
She said he did not stop but police traced his car at about 5pm to a car park at a weight lifting club three or four miles away, where he had abandoned it and it had caught fire.
She said they made enquiries to find him and when they did, he admitted to being the driver.
She said he had been banned from driving and ordered to take an extended test for causing death by dangerous driving in 2012 but had been convicted of driving while disqualified on three occasions since then, one of them attracting a prison sentence.
Mitigating, Helen Coney said Gilbert ‘would welcome’ support from the Probation Service.
She said most of his offending came from alcohol, which he drank on a daily basis.
Banning him for a further five years, the magistrates said these were ‘very serious charges’ and told him he just could not keeping driving while he was disqualified.
They then sentenced him to three months in prison on each of the disqualified driving charges, to run consecutively, and one month in prison for driving with excess alcohol, to run consecutively, making a total of six months custody.
His licence was also endorsed for the other offences.
