A DRIVER who crashed her car after taking cocaine has been banned from the road, after she was found to be 16 times over the legal limit.
Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told that Stacey McNeill was caught after a dog walker came across her car, which had crashed into the wall of Tranent Post Office at the junction of the town's Bridge Street and Church Street on the morning of January 9.
McNeill was said to be in “a distressed state” and appeared to be under the influence of a substance, leading the member of the public to alert the police to the incident.
When officers arrived on the scene, 38-year-old McNeill was not in the area but she was tracked down near to a local pub.
The court heard officers noted that the motorist, of Durie’s Park, Elphinstone, was “acting in an erratic manner” and her “pupils were dilated”.
She identified herself as the driver of the crashed vehicle and supplied the officers with a negative roadside breath test.
She was subsequently taken to hospital, where she gave a positive blood sample for the substance benzoylecgonine, the chemical compound that is produced when cocaine is metabolized in the body.
McNeill’s sample was given as 800 micrograms per litre of blood. The legal limit for driving with the substance in a person's body is just 50mg per litre of blood.
She pleaded guilty to the offence during a hearing at the Capital court last Wednesday.
Sheriff John Cook told the offender that she had been “a danger to yourself and other motorists” and that she had provided “a very high reading” for the compound.
McNeill was banned from driving for 14 months and fined £640.