Teenage drink-driver crashed friend’s car while on cigarette run

A teenage drink-driver who ran out of road and luck on a cigarette run from an Angus holiday lodge has been ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work.

Luke McRae crashed on Drumsturdy Road after picking up a KFC and cigarettes at the nearby Sainsbury’s in Dundee on July 1.

The 18-year-old had been drinking with his friends at Forbes of Kingennie resort when he was picked to drive his friend’s car.

But McRae suffered a “low-speed” collision and hitched a ride back, during which the driver witness detected a “strong smell of alcohol” on his breath.

When McRae, of Lawrence Street, Dundee, was breath tested three hours after the crash, he was almost four times the legal limit.

At Forfar Sheriff Court, Sheriff Jillian Martin-Brown imposed a 12-month community payback order with the unpaid work element, and banned him from driving for a year.

Also at Forfar: Robert Alexander, 66, was admonished after a period of good behaviour imposed by the court last year.

Alexander, of West Smieton Street, Carnoustie, was convicted after trial last October of stalking offences against a woman at his former home on the Panmure estate, between 2013 and 2104.

Alistair Peacock, 34, formerly of Glenclova Terrace, Forfar, and now living in Brighton, was fined £335 after admitting breaching a community payback order previously imposed in respect of assault and breach of bail.

James Pow, 27, of Emislaw Drive, Arbroath, was placed on a high tariff deferred sentence for a month after previously admitting a breach of the peace.

The court heard Pow had just been released from a 60-day prison sentence but had been able to return to his home address and the high tariff deferral was imposed to give him a chance to prove he could successfully engage with the authorities.