The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A Spalding woman, who drove her car into the bay window of a neighbour’s house when almost four times over the legal alcohol limit, regularly drank three bottles of wine a day, a court has been told.
Elena Alexandrovina Wenham (42) of Abbots Crescent, who admitted driving with excess alcohol, was given a suspended prison sentence by magistrates sitting at Boston, who told her it was “a very serious offence”.
Paul Wood, prosecuting, said that at 11.11am on August 17, Mrs Wenham’s husband rang the police to say that his wife was driving while drunk and it was found that she had driven her Mini Cooper car through the bay window of a house in Pennygate, causing substantial damage.
Police attended and, after a positive breath test, she gave a breath sample two and a half hours after she had been driving, of 128 microgrammes of alcohol, the legal limit being 35.
Mr Wood said she admitted to officers that she had lost control of the vehicle and that she had been drinking the night before but had to go out and get a birthday cake for her husband.
Phil Cookson, mitigating, said she was “deeply sorry and embarrassed”.
He said she had drunk two bottles of wine the night before but had gone for a run and then drunk another bottle of wine before deciding to go and get the cake.
He said she was a “reluctant driver” and only used the car to get to work and occasionally into town.
“This is a blessing in disguise for her,” he said “as she has to face the fact she has been drinking excessively for the past two years.”
He told the magistrates she had been diagnosed with alcohol abuse syndrome and was on the verge of alcoholism and that by late 2018, she was drinking two or three bottles of wine every day “to get through life”.
“Were it not for this incident she would have been continuing on this course, but this has brought her to sharp reality,” he said.
Mr Cookson said that apart from one day, she had not drunk at all since the incident, but she needed more help and was going on a 28 day residential course for treatment.
Sentencing her to eight weeks in prison, suspended for a year, the magistrates said it was a “very serious offence” that had happened “at a time of the morning when lots of people would have been around”, as well as the possibility of injury to the people in the house she drove into.
She was also ordered to undergo a six-month alcohol treatment order and observe 12 rehabilitation days.
She was also banned from driving for 30 months but she declined the drink drivers’ rehabilitation course, saying she did not plan to drive again, and was ordered to pay £207 in costs and charges.
