Death crash drug addict had downed six pints
A drink-driver who caused a death crash should not been at the wheel of a car as his licence had been revoked almost three years earlier because of his drug addiction, a court heard.
Kevin Moore admitted downing six pints of beer before he crashed his father’s Land Rover Discovery head-on into a car driven by Andrew Brain on the A229 between Linton and Staplehurst.
Jailing the 45-year-old father for six years, Judge Adele Williams said: “Your conduct was grossly irresponsible. You should not have been driving any vehicle at all.
“You ignored the law by driving without a licence and while uninsured. You ignored the law by driving while intoxicated. The loss of control of your vehicle was precisely because you were intoxicated.”
Moore, of Couchman Green Lane, Staplehurst, was also banned from driving for nine years and will have to take an extended test before he could be allowed back on the road. Maid- stone Crown Court was told his real “demon” was drugs and he did not have a drink problem.
But on the afternoon of January 4, he went to the Source Bar in Maidstone, owned by his brother, and drank six pints of beer before driving home.
Prosecutor Giles Bedloe said Mr Brain, 63, was driving his Volkswagen Golf from Staplehurst to his home in Maidstone Road, Marden, just after 5pm.
Witnesses had seen Moore swerving over the road before the crash. His car ended up facing the wrong way on its side, while Mr Brain’s plunged into a deep ditch.
Mr Bedloe said Mr Brain had a severe head injury and was unconscious. He died the next day in King’s College Hospital, London.
Moore was taken to Pembury Hospital with minor injuries. A blood sample could not be taken for medical reasons.
A breath test was taken and a back calculation showed he would have been twice the legal driving limit.
Mr Brain was the sole carer for his 92-year-old mother Dorothy and she had since moved out of her home of 60 years and gone into residential care because she could not look after herself.