Driver slumped over the wheel told police he’d been ‘pumping cones all night’

Police found the 40-year-old slumped over the steering wheel of his car parked at the side of a busy highway.

The court heard the driver told police he had been “pumping cones all night”.

A 40-year-old man found slumped over the steering wheel of his car at the side of a busy highway told police he had been “pumping cones all night”.

When breath tested at the roadside of the Pacific Motorway in Greenslopes about 11.15am, August 10, last year, Millmerran man Mark Davis Emmerson had tested negative for alcohol, Toowoomba Magistrates Court heard.

However, he was slurring his words, struggling to stay awake and when he said he had been pumping cones all night, adding he had been smoking “weed”, he was taken to a nearby hospital.

A blood test taken at the hospital was later analysed to show Emmerson at the time had amphetamine, methylamphetamine and cannabis in his system, police prosecutor Rohan Brewster-Webb told the court.

Three days later he had been caught driving while under suspension due to his driver’s licence being suspended when he was found drug driving.

During a police search of his Millmerran home on November 23, the 40-year-old had been found with a glass pipe, three brass pipes and cones for smoking cannabis, electric scales for weighing it and a grinder for chopping up leaf, Mr Brewster-Webb said.

Emmerson pleaded guilty to all charges.

His solicitor Michael McElhinney told the court his client had suffered post traumatic stress disorder after being stabbed three years ago and had fallen off the wagon on this occasion.

His client was doing an IT course and caring for his father at Millmerran, he said.

Acting Magistrate Damien Carroll ordered Emmerson do 80 hours community service and disqualified him from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence for two years and six months.