Birthday burnouts end in court

A Taranaki man celebrated his 19th birthday with drinking and burnouts and ended it comatose on a table while a blood sample was taken for police.

Police were called to Rennie Pollock-Anderton’s birthday party at Manaia around 9pm on October 18 after a bystander saw him doing burnouts on the street, police prosecutor Sergeant Steve Hickey told Ha¯wera District Court.

The police arrived in time to see him doing a burnout that created a large cloud of smoke that blew across neighbouring properties.

Pollock-Anderton had drunk a large amount of alcohol before he grabbed his car keys at 9pm and began driving up and down the street, accelerating hard so his tyres screeched and smoked, spinning on the asphalt.

He was so drunk he could not communicate with police after they pulled him over and couldn’t give a breath sample so a blood test was arranged instead.

Pollock-Anderton later lay comatose on the table in the EBA room, Hickey said. Analysis showed he had 227mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of his blood. As a person aged 19 or under, he has a zero alcohol limit, and being on a learner’s licence wasn’t supposed to drive unsupervised.

In the dock on Tuesday, Pollock-Anderton pleaded guilty to charges of sustained loss of traction and driving with excess alcohol.

Lawyer Alice Vickers said Pollock-Anderton had no further explanation for his behaviour.

Judge Chris Sygrove advised Pollock-Anderton to make this court appearance, which was his first, also his last.

He fined him $800 with $130 court costs on the drink driving charge, as well as the analysis fee of $221.99 and medical expenses of $110.

He was disqualified from driving for 28 days to have an alcohol interlock device installed in his car.

He was fined $400 with court costs of $130 for the sustained loss of traction charge, and disqualified for six months.

The fines and fees totalled $1791.99.