Banned driver caught at the wheel weeks after being disqualified narrowly avoids jail
A disqualified driver caught at the wheel less than a month after being banned from the road has narrowly avoided an immediate prison sentence.
Toby Owen, from Percy Street in Shrewsbury, was caught driving a Ford Focus in the West Yorkshire city of Wakefield on September 9, less than a month after being given an interim disqualification at Telford Magistrates Court in August where he had previously admitted taking a vehicle without permission and two counts of drug-driving.
On February 22 he was found to have 173 microgrammes of benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite in 100 millilitres of blood, when stopped at the wheel of a Cupra Formentor - taken between February 13 and 22 - on the A49 Battlefield Link Road at Shrewsbury. The legal limit is 50mcg.
Five days later, on the A5 at Shrewsbury, he had 32mcg of cocaine in 100 millilitres of blood, more than triple the legal limit of 10mcg, while driving a Vauxhall Crossland.
He pleaded guilty to all three charges on August 16.
