A lorry driver who swigged beer as he drove his truck along busy roads has been jailed for five months.
Police found empty cans in the cab of Kevin Stevenson’s vehicle after worried members of the public raised the alarm.
The 44-year-old was also banned from the road for eight years after admitting being behind the wheel of the lorry while almost four times the old legal alcohol limit.
Stevenson, of 22 Schoolbrae Lhanbryde, was working for building firm Jewson when the incident happened – but was sacked when his bosses found out about it.
Elgin Sheriff Court heard he was asked to pick up a digger from Buckie and take it to the company’s Huntly depot.
But when he stopped at a filling station in Mosstodloch’s Main Road, staff and customers became concerned about his condition. Witnesses said Stevenson as “staggering and slurring his speech”.
Fiscal depute Kevin Corrins said the customers who “couldn’t decipher what Stevenson was saying and could smell alcohol” had to physically stop him from getting into his lorry.
He said: “They noted Stevenson was heading back to his vehicle, which was parked in a bus stop across the road from the petrol station. Those witnesses got between him and the door of the lorry, stopping him from entering it.”
The police arrived and found him a short distance away in a Chinese takeaway.
Mr Corrins said: “The police formed the opinion he was under the influence of alcohol.”
Officers found empty cans in the front of the vehicle, and a breath test showed that Stevenson had 125 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath – the legal limit at the time was 35 micrograms.
Stevenson initially maintained he had stopped the vehicle to drink, but a tracking device on the lorry showed it was last driven minutes before he entered the petrol station.
His agent, solicitor Stephen Carty, said his client was unsure on whether he planned to continue driving after stopping at Mosstodloch on August 29 last year. He said: “Given the state of inebriation my client was in at the time he was going back to the vehicle, he can’t say one way or the other what inclination he may have had.”
Mr Carty acknowledged his client had previous drink-driving convictions, but urged Sheriff Susan Raeburn to consider community service as an alternative to jail. Sheriff Raeburn said: “I have to have regard to the public interest and the accused has two previous analogous convictions.”
A spokesman for Jewson said: “The health and safety of our employees, customers and members of the general public is our absolute number one priority, and for that reason we have a zero drugs and alcohol tolerance policy. As such, Mr Stevenson is no longer employed by Jewson.”