Third ban after police chase

Drunk driver sped through streets

A Perth motorist was handed his THIRD life ban yesterday after a high-speed police chase through several streets on a city housing estate.

Twenty-eight-year-old John Phillips, of Newhouse Road, was also jailed for a total of 13 months after pleading guilty to a catalogue of dangerous driving.

Perth Sheriff Court was told that he repeatedly swerved between lanes and drove on the wrong side of the road as he was pursued at speed through several streets in Tulloch by marked police vehicles.

The chase ended when the accused stopped outside a house in Ritchie Place and disappeared inside.

Police traced him there and he appeared to be “heavily intoxicated and was slurring his words,” according to depute fiscal Michael Sweeney.

He was breathalysed and taken to Perth Police HQ but refused to take part in any further procedures.

Phillips will have to re-sit and pass the extended driving test if he ever wants to get behind the wheel again.

He admitted charges of driving dangerously, while disqualified and without insurance in Tulloch Road, Primrose Terrace, Mathieson Drive and Ritchie Place, all Perth, on April 21, 2018.

He also pled guilty to a fourth charge of failing to provide two breath specimens for analysis at the Barrack Street police HQ.

Not guilty charges were accepted to resetting a car, running into the house in Ritchie Place and shouting and swearing and making abusive remarks, and failing to stop for uniformed police officers.

The court was told that Phillips came to the attention of the police about 6.45pm and he was seen driving in Primrose Crescent with other people as passengers.

Officers turned their car around and attempted to trace the vehicle but it was being “driven at speed and was lost to sight.”

A look-out request was circulated to other officers and he was later spotted at 8.30pm as he pulled in front of their vehicle and accelerated away.

“They activated their lights and observed the vehicle being driven in an erratic and dangerous manner into Mathieson Drive in an effort to evade them,” explained the fiscal.

The vehicle was being driven in excess of the 30mph speed limit and was “weaving over the road and on the wrong side of the road.”

Solicitor Paul Ralph said it was approaching the second anniversary of the death of the accused’s child and he hadn’t been thinking “rationally.”

Imposing the jail term and a further lifetime driving ban, Sheriff William Wood said he had expressed sympathy for the accused in the past following the loss of his child but it wasn’t an excuse he could rely on to avoid a custodial sentence.

He also noted that the latest incidents had come “hard on the heels” of further road traffic offences at the end of last year.

The sheriff warned him if he carried on offending, he would appear on petition and could face five years behind bars.

Phillips was given an 11-month jail term and banned for life last year for an earlier episode of dangerous driving when he reached speeds in excess of 70mph in a 20 limit as he careered through several city streets during another highspeed police chase a week before Christmas.

Sheriff Wood likened the accused’s chaotic driving on that occasion to “something off the television or the movies.”

He added: “You placed lives and property in danger, including your own, of course.

“This was one of the worst cases of dangerous driving.”