Night in the watch house

Not quite the Queen’s Birthday break he’d planned

SPENDING the night in custody and then fronting court probably wasn’t the Queen’s Birthday Monday holiday that this Toowoomba man had been looking forward to.

Ronny Downey was picked up by police doing a walkthrough the Newtown Hotel about 3.30am Sunday and taken into custody on a warrant after he failed to front Toowoomba Magistrates Court last month.

The 45-year-old had been wanted for renting hire cars from two separate companies and failing to return the vehicles on time, leaving outstanding fees, the same court heard yesterday.

Police prosecutor Julia Wheaton said Downey had hired a car from a Toowoomba firm on June 16 for three days but only sent a text to the company on June 25 saying he had left the car at the rear of the business with the keys in the door. The car had some damage, Senior Constable Wheaton said.

He had similarly hired a car from another firm on August 1 and failed to return it in the required time frame, she said.

Downey pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully using motor vehicles and one count of failing to appear in the same court on September 17.

Duty solicitor Shane MacDonald, of Toowoomba legal firm MacDonald Law, told the court his client on both occasions had loaned the car to friends who didn’t return them to him.

His client had no offences since 1999 and had since repaid thousands of dollars owed to the hire firms, he said. His client instructed that he had attended the court as required on September 17 but had left early after being told his brother had been in a car crash, Mr MacDonald submitted.

Magistrate Kay Ryan fined Downey $900 and ordered he pay compensation of $446.36 for damage and fuel for one of the vehicles.