Marie Lindblad Hill  

Driving Incident

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Some of you reading this page may have seen the inconsistent press stories above me that show up when you 'google' my name. I just wanted to briefly set out here what actually happened.

 

One evening in December 2016 I collected my daughters from an after-school event. I drove them home and parked near our house.

 

When we exited our car a motorcyclist, still wearing his helmet, started shouting at us from across the street. It was unnerving and felt threatening on a dark winter evening - we therefore hurried into our house.

With dinner I had some wine and then another wind-down drink with my husband when he came back from work. But at ~11pm there was a knock on the door; it was the police wanting to ask me questions about an alleged parking incident, reported to them by a "fast food delivery driver".  I said I was certainly unaware of having scratched any other car while parking. The police however said they had "looked at evidence of scratches to a nearby car" and then added that they needed to breathalyse me. I said I had consumed wine during dinner and, as the police report cited in the press states, I even had a glass of whisky in my hand when the police arrived. To our amazement, the police decided to breathalyse and charge me anyway.

 

When the matter came to the Magistrates' court, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) acknowledged that I was breathalysed two and a half hours after parking my car, I had clearly been drinking after driving, and the 'witness' who saw me park had disappeared after that evening. Moreover the owner of the 'other vehicle', which I had allegedly damaged, had made no insurance claim against us. 

 

The CPS acknowledged their case was extremely weak. But since the judge had berated them for failing to respond to our requests for evidence and wasting the court's time, the CPS offered only to drop the drink-driving charge completely and immediately if I agreed to 3 points on my licence and a £150 fine for 'failing to report an accident'. 

I agreed to this offer as it had no meaningful consequences for me, and it meant that I would not to have to begin a full court hearing. In addition the CPS agreed to pay me £2,659 in compensation for the cost and aggravation of the dropped drink-driving charge. 

 

That closed the matter - although to my surprise, a few newspapers thought this 'dropped charges' story was worth reporting on!

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