Impaired driver nets $1,300 fine

A local judge warned a young man it was only by chance that he didn’t take someone’s life when he made the decision to drive drunk.

Judge Fergus O’Donnell told Conner Manlow of a 23-year-old man he recently sentenced to five years in jail for taking the life of a Welland woman.

Jacob Pirson was convicted earlier this month of impaired driving causing death and sentenced to five years in a penitentiary. At the time of the crash which claimed the life of Julia Pieroway, Pirson was driving with a blood-alcohol level of 114 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.

By comparison, Manlow’s reading was 170 milligrams.

“The difference between him and you? Chance … nothing more than that,” the judge said in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines after the 21-year-old pleaded guilty to impaired driving.

O’Donnell said crimes involving drinking and driving are often committed by “decent, upstanding and fine people.”

Such individuals, he added, would never consider robbing a convenience store or committing a fraud, however they are responsible for the leading criminal cause of death in Canada.

Court heard Manlow, a resident of Thorold, was arrested Aug. 6 following a singlevehicle crash in Wainfleet.

“This could have every easily turned into bodily injury or death,” O’Donnell told Manlow.

The first-time offender was fined $1,300 and banned from driving for 12 months.