A driver was high on a “significant amount of cannabis” and methamphetamine when he smacked into a car stopped in front of him, injuring the driver.
Ross Peter Guy had levels of cannabis in his system 20 times over the threshold considered high risk while driving.
He claimed his attention was diverted by two SPCA workers in high-vis vests with a cage beside the road, and that he couldn’t stop in time before shunting into the car.
In his haste to get rid of evidence he’d been taking drugs, Guy then tried passing a bag of cannabis to his mum, who had arrived at the scene of the central Nelson crash, police said.
The bag contained eight separately sealed small snap-lock bags with a total of 23.5g of cannabis, police said in a summary of facts.
The 39-year-old has now been sentenced in the Nelson District Court to five months’ home detention.
He was also sentenced on an unrelated charge of receiving a stolen bike last December, for which he was found guilty at a judge-alone trial.
Judge David Laurenson, KC, said an aggravating feature was that Guy was found in possession of the item while on bail on the driving and drugs matters.
Guy had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of causing injury while driving with drugs in his system, namely cannabis, which exceeded the high-risk level, plus a charge of driving with drugs in his system, being methamphetamine.
He also admitted the charge of possessing cannabis, which he asserted had nothing to do with his mother, and that it was his.
Police said blood analysis found concentration levels of the drug in Guy’s system exceeded the high-risk level of 3 nanograms per millilitre of blood, with a result of 62ng per ml of blood.
One nanogram is described as “one billionth of a gram”.
He was also found with a blood concentration of 43ng of methamphetamine, which exceeded the 10ng per millilitre of blood deemed to be safe, although it did not exceed 50ng, which was the high-risk level.
Guy’s lawyer, Steven Zindel, said his client had been working in the hops industry and had largely remained out of trouble, but a few months before the offending he was made redundant and spiralled back into drug use.
Zindel acknowledged Guy had “too much cannabis and meth” in his system while driving that day.
The police said the “huge amount of drugs” in Guy’s system made the offending “very serious”.
While he had a limited criminal history, the police noted his “quite long” demerit history.
The court heard that about 4.30pm on October 6 last year, Guy was driving north on Nelson’s Waimea Rd.
Police said there was heavy congestion in both the north and south lanes.
According to the summary of facts, Guy admitted he had been consuming cannabis from midday and had also taken methamphetamine.
He was travelling too fast to stop short of the cars in front, running into the back of the victim’s vehicle, which was stationary and waiting for traffic ahead to move on.
The impact shunted the victim’s vehicle forward, causing the driver to hit her head on the steering wheel. Police said she sought medical attention for nausea and headaches and was off work for a week with a concussion.
While police were at the crash scene, Guy tried to retrieve a bag of cannabis from the vehicle and pass it to his mother, who had arrived on site.
He was detained for a compulsory impairment test and later provided the blood sample.
Judge Laurenson said a pre-sentence report recommended home detention as the appropriate outcome. It said Guy’s use of drugs and then driving posed a high risk of harm to himself and showed a continued disregard for the safety of others.
The judge said home detention with a list of conditions aimed at addressing Guy’s rehabilitation needs, including drug use, was appropriate.
From an adjusted starting point of 14 months in prison on the lead charge of driving causing injury with drugs in his system, Guy received discounts for his guilty pleas and steps taken already to address his drug issues.
That brought his sentence down to 11 months in prison, which was within the range to have it commuted to home detention, with nine months of post-detention conditions.
Guy was also disqualified from driving for 12 months, and ordered to pay $877 in reparation to the victim at $15 per week, plus $1784 in analyst fees.
