Kirkby man who stole £7,000 from own grandmother has sentence activated following drink-drive

A member of the public tipped off police after the collision and Ryan Wood was found reversing his Ford Transit van on grass off Sutton Middle Lane, at 4.30am, on May 6.

Prosecutor Simon Rowe said officers snatched the keys from the ignition, and Wood was “emotional”, and showed “the classic signs of being drunk”.

A test revealed he had 89 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, when the legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

Emma Cornell, mitigating, said he had fallen out with his girlfriend earlier in the evening, and taken a taxi home.

“He tried to telephone her, but her friend, who doesn’t like him, answered and lied, telling him that she was with another man,” said Ms Cornell.

“He was driving to his girlfriend’s house when he was stopped.”

She argued that it would be unjust to activate a 16 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, which had been imposed in October last year, for false representation and theft.

Ms Cornell said he had completed more than 180 hours of the 240 hours of unpaid work which had been ordered.

She said Wood had accepted there were issues in his life that need addressing, including a drink problem, and he was referred to counselling for depression after his grandmother’s death.

But Mr Rowe reminded the court that Wood’s suspended sentence was imposed for stealing more than £7,000 from his grandmother’s bank account between October 2016 and April 2017.

Wood, 21, of Lowmoor Road, Kirkby, admitted driving with excess alcohol when he appeared at Mansfield Magistrates Court, on Friday.

Magistrates activated six weeks of the suspended sentence, and added two weeks for the driving offence.

He was banned for 22 months, starting from his release from prison.

He was offered a drink drive rehabilitation course, which will reduce the ban by 174 days if completed by August 2019. He was ordered to pay a £115 government surcharge.