Northern beaches’ drink drivers exposed: Nurse, sportsman, learner some of 100s charged with DUI
In the past year hundreds of drink drivers have been caught getting behind the wheel on the northern beaches while extremely drunk. Read some of their shocking stories.
Manly
Don't miss out on the headlines from Manly. Followed categories will be added to My News.
More than 300 people in just 12 months were found guilty, by Manly Local Court, of drink or drug driving.
About 20 per cent of the 316 drivers convicted in the year ending March 2020 were three times, or more, over the legal blood alcohol limit, latest crime stats show.
And dozens more drivers on the northern beaches, in the same period, were handed fines and automatic three-month licence suspensions by police for being low range drink drivers — readings of between 0.05 and 0.079.
In the previous 12 months, to March 2019, 82 high-range drink drivers had to front Manly Local Court, according to figures released by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Here are some of the most shocking stories of the northern beaches’ drink drivers, from a drunken learner driver who led police on a 150km/h car chase; a nurse who drove home from the club while seven times over the limit and a woman who ran over her neighbour while blind drunk at 9.30am.
JAMES DALY
Convicted
A nurse, who went on a Friday night vodka bender at a local club, was caught driving seven times over the legal limit.
Daly, from Queenscliff, was so drunk — he blew 0.355 — that he drove his car on the wrong side of the road nearly hitting pedestrians and other cars.
The 38-year-old managed to pilot his Mazda CX3 for more than six kilometres before a member of the public grabbed his car keys when he came to a halt on South Creek Rd, Dee Why.
Manly Local Court heard that Daly had started drinking when he was 11 years old.
He was slapped with an intensive corrections order and disqualified from driving for nine months.
MONICA MECHAM
Convicted
The aged care worker was drunk — five times over the limit — and on her way to work at 9.30am when she drove her car on to the footpath and ran over one of her neighbours.
Mecham, 56, of Belrose had a blood alcohol reading of 0.278 after a wine and vodka binge when her Mercedes hatchback badly injured Lorraine Gooden who was out for her morning walk along Pringle Ave.
Mrs Gooden spent 10 days in Royal North Shore hospital for treatment to a fractured left wrist and facial lacerations. She also had surgery on her left shoulder and was left with memory loss due to a traumatic brain injury.
By coincidence the two women, who were not friends, knew each other. Their homes shared the same back fence and they had spoken briefly to each other several times.
Mecham, who pleaded guilty to high-range drink driving, was jailed for 12 months by Manly Local Court, but she successfully appealed the sentence in the District Court and was given a 12-month Intensive Corrections Order instead.
She was also disqualified from driving for nine months.
NATALIE KAGLATZIS
Guilty plea
A woman who crashed her car trying to drive out of the locked Belrose Hotel carpark has pleaded guilty to drink-driving at six times over the limit.
Now, Kaglatzis, 48, of Frenchs Forest, is being assessed for home detention after a night out at the pub ended with her being arrested just after midnight.
Kaglatzis, who was described in Manly Local Court on Tuesday as being a “good person” with a chronic alcohol problem, had been at her local for drinks after attending her grandmother’s funeral.
After the hotel closed, she jumped into her Mazda 3 sedan and reversed it 20 metres before crashing hard, backwards, into the car park’s boundary fence.
When police arrived Kaglatzis said repeatedly to them: “Do you want to play?”
She blew 0.306 and will be sentenced on August 26.
TIM PAYNE
Convicted
A magistrate said this Wellington Phoenix soccer star was as ‘drunk as a Lord” when he went for a late-night joy ride in a golf cart during a COVID-19 lockdown at Narrabeen.
The New Zealand international, whose behaviour was described as “asinine” by his own lawyer, was arrested after breaking the team’s coronavirus quarantine lockdown after a night on the drink at the Sydney Academy of Sport.
Police stopped a shirtless Payne, 26, who was driving the golf cart with shirtless goalkeeper Oliver Sail in the passenger seat, along Oxford Falls Rd, Oxford Falls, at 1.10am after alarmed motorists had called police after seeing the pair travelling at 10-15km/h along the dark Wakehurst Parkway.
Payne blew 0.100.
MAURIESHA VILCHES
Convicted
A BMW-driving dental nurse knocked off five bourbon and cokes in 40 minutes at a northern beaches’ pub before getting behind the wheel and crashing into a parked car.
Vilches, 27, of Wentworth Point, downed the bourbon and cokes in The Sands hotel at Narrabeen before driving 12km to Balgowlah.
She was nearly four times over the legal limit, before her BMW veered into the parked car on Sydney Rd at about 9.20pm on a Friday night.
The car then careered to the right side of the road, before spearing back into the left lanes and mounting the footpath. Vilches’ car only came to stop when it hit a street sign.
Vilches was convicted of high-range drink driving. She blew 0.192. She was sentenced to 12 months in jail, but the time will be served in the community as an Intensive Corrections Order. She was also banned from driving for nine months.
SIOSIUA KINAHOI
Convicted
He was a learner driver, on his own, but that didn’t stop him speeding away from police — at 150km/h — who wanted to stop him for a RBT.
During the chase, Kinahoi, 19, who was living at Narraweena at the time, rocketed through a 60km/h zone outside the Warringah Mall Westfield shopping centre, Brookvale, at 150km/h.
Earlier, he sped through the intersection of Pittwater and Mitchell roads at 120km/h.
Kinahoi almost lost control of the car before it came to a stop at a bus stop near Ankali Pl, North Manly. He then got out of the car with his hands up and said: “I’m sorry” to police.
The novice driver, who is not supposed to have any alcohol in his system, blew 0.028
He won’t get a chance to take his driving test for sometime after Manly Local Court banned him from getting behind the wheel for three years.
MITCHELL DRAKE
Convicted
A man who knocked off a dozen stubbies of beers, bundled his seven-year-old son into the family Holden and then collided with another car at 6pm on a Monday, was three times over the limit when he crashed his car at 6pm on a Monday.
When police arrived they found Drake, 53, laying by the side of Forest Way at Belrose, speaking gibberish, with his son sitting on the kerb next to him.
The married father-of-two from Frenchs Forest was convicted of high-range drink-driving. He blew 0.151.
Drake was given a 12-month Community Corrections Order by Manly Local Court to be of good behaviour and to stay away from alcohol. He was disqualified from driving for nine months.
ROCHFORD COOK
Convicted
A drink P-plate driver driving from Newport to Narrabeen when he hit 165km/h trying escape the police – now he’ll have to stay off the drink for a year, and the roads for two.
Cook, 25, of Newport, who had 10 beers under his belt, sped away from police after they tried to pull him over for a random breath test at Mona Vale on Australia Day.
He told police he had been drinking for seven hours at The Newport hotel and at his home before he got behind the wheel of his Holden ute at about 1.40am to visit his girlfriend at Narrabeen.
Manly Local Court heard that police said Cook’s ute reached speeds of between 155-165km/h in a 70km/h zone along Pittwater Rd.
Cook had two previous convictions for drink driving — he lost his licence for three years in 2014. He was banned from driving for two years for a drive recklessly charge and placed on a nine-month Intensive Correction Order for the drink driving matter.
PAUL BROMHEAD
Convicted
He was a drunk, disqualified driver who had been drinking wine before he crashed his car into a pedestrian on a footpath as he was using an ATM.
Bromhead, 59, of Allambie Heights, whose licence had been disqualified for five years in 2018 for high-range drink-driving, was behind the wheel when his car crushed Lachlan Moore against a wall at the Allambie Heights shopping centre.
Mr Moore, 22, had to have extensive surgery on a serious leg fracture.
Bromhead, who only lived a few hundred metres away, blew 0.017. The pensioner was convicted of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and driving while disqualified. He was also convicted of driving an unregistered and uninsured car.
He was jailed for 18 months.