A drug-addled driver who crashed his car while breaching court orders granted wish to be jailed
A man repeatedly caught with drugs in Melbourne’s southeast has asked to be jailed because it would be better for his anxiety and force him to stay clean. And that is exactly what he got.
South East
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An ice-addict repeatedly caught with drugs asked to be jailed because it would be better for his anxiety and force him to stay clean.
Nicholas David Fontana got his wish at Dromana Magistrates’ Court last Thursday, when he was slotted for a month.
The Capel Sound 22-year-old said he would rather be in prison than on another corrections order after he pleaded guilty to drug and careless driving, drug possessions, a weapons charge and court breaches.
The court heard police found Fontana drug-addled and behaving erratically when attending his home with a warrant on January 14 last year.
A search came up with a small bag of ice and four canisters of GHB.
Just a week later, at 2am on January 22, he was seen driving along Point Nepean Rd in Rosebud.
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Again he was acting in an erratic way, and this time a police search uncovered a baseball bat he said he “used for protection”.
On May 29 he was seen in a car on Point Nepean Rd in Rosebud, again with ice.
And then on December 6 he was driving a vehicle that crashed into another car after running a red light in Moorooduc.
He injured himself and a passenger in the other vehicle.
Blood tests taken at a hospital showed he had ice in his system.
He also breached a 2016 community corrections order relating to a series of dishonesty and drug offences, failing to do any of the 250 work hours and engage properly with support services.
In court his lawyer said he used drugs to self-treat his panic attacks, but wanted to “clean himself up”.
She said he couldn’t do another corrections order because of his severe anxiety and he wanted to “gain maturity while in custody and get sober”.
Magistrate Julian Ayres said the possessions and driving charges didn’t warrant a jail term, but the breach did.
“I’m not going to impose a (jail) sentence just because it is convenient,” Mr Ayres said.
“(But) it is a pretty bad breach, you did very little on the order, almost nothing.”
Fontana was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
He was also convicted and fined $2500, and disqualified from driving for 12 months.