‘Mercy mission’ drunk driver has roads ban lifted
A DRUNK driver escaped a ban because she was rushing her stabbed brother to hospital.
Sarah Searle, 45, had had ‘three or four gin and tonics’ at a party she was hosting when her disabled brother Andrew West was knifed, a court heard.
Fearing an ambulance would struggle to find her home on a remote farm, she put him in her Ford Focus and began driving to the nearest hospital. But after travelling ten miles, Miss Searle was pulled over by police on the A27 near Portsmouth, just five minutes from Queen Alexandra Hospital.
Officers said Miss Searle was ‘unsteady on her feet’ and saw her brother’s T-shirt soaked in blood. They then spotted an axe she had been using to gather firewood.
She was found to have 164 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of urine – the legal limit in England is 107. In October, Miss
Searle was given a 12-month ban for drinkdriving, fined £184 and told to pay a £30 victim surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.
But an appeal hearing at Portsmouth Crown Court was told how Mr West had been ‘stabbed in the back’ with a Stanley knife by Miss Searle’s then partner.
Miss Searle said she had been in a bedroom at her home in Compton, Hampshire, when she heard screams. ‘As I entered the front room, I looked down at my brother. He had blood all over his leg and... his body... was covered in blood as well.
‘People were screaming at me saying he had been stabbed by the man who at that time was my partner.
‘He still had the knife and I wanted to get my brother away from the party.
‘I thought if I didn’t get my brother into that car, I thought he was going to die.’
She said she feared an ambulance would not reach her home in time and Google Maps did not direct people to her exact location.
Miss Searle, who now lives in Hambrook, West Sussex, has been a carer for Mr West for 14 years. He suffered a brain injury in 2009 in an ‘horrific accident’ when he was beaten up.
When pulled over by police in
‘Brother knifed by ex-partner’
the early hours of April 20, Miss Searle said she panicked.
‘I remember screaming, “He’s been stabbed, he’s been stabbed”,’ she said. ‘I felt they were wasting time.’
Miss Searle’s ex-partner was initially arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm but charges were not brought ‘due to lack of support from the victim and witnesses’, said a police spokesman. The case has now been passed back to the investigating officer.
Judge William Ashworth overturned the ban because Miss Searle was on a mercy mission and instead gave her six points on her licence.
He told her the case met the emergency test ‘that a sober friend in the circumstances that you found yourself would have advised you to drive’.