Drink driver drove to police

An eight-time drink driver saved the police a job when she drove to the station and staggered in.

Ngaruawahia woman Kahu Maria Pokai, 40, racked up her seventh and eighth drink-driving convictions within two months of each other at the end of last year.

Judge Glen Marshall said he had no other choice but to jail her after she had paid no heed to the stern warnings the court had given her since she first appeared in 1996. He sentenced her to eight months imprisonment and disqualified her from driving indefinitely.

After returning home from a heavy drinking session in September Pokai became convinced her children were with the police and drove to the Ngaruawahia police station to try to find them.

When she turned up on their doorstep it was clear she had been drinking and a breath test resulted in a reading of 735mcgs – nearly twice the limit.

In November, while on bail, Pokai was caught by police again, this time in a more conventional way – at a roadside checkpoint – while she was giving friends a lift home from a party. Her evidential breath test read 663mcgs.

Judge Marshall gave her credit for accepting she had a problem with alcohol and gambling but it was not enough to keep her out of prison.

Her lawyer asked for an adjournment to assess the possibility of home detention but the judge quickly put the kibosh on that. ‘‘A message needs to be sent to you that this type of drink driving won’t be tolerated,’’ he said.

‘‘You need to get to grips with your alcoholism and get it sorted.’’

The judge also ordered release conditions to give Pokai access to counselling for her addictions and hoped she could ‘‘clean the slate’’.