A drink-driver was consumed with grief the day he made a foolish decision to get behind the wheel and crashed his car.
Oliver Esteban had been drinking with a small group of relatives and friends after hearing about the death of a close relative – and was distressed because he didn’t have enough money to fly home for the funeral.
He went out to clear his head and hit a bollard in the central reservation at the junction of South Street and Eagle Street in Bourne.
Paul Wood, prosecuting, said Esteban carried on driving into Eagle Road and police came on the scene, saw him checking his vehicle and breath-tested him.
Esteban (42), of Edinburgh Crescent, Bourne, was fined £200 and banned from driving for 12 months.
He must also pay £85 costs and a £20 victim surcharge.
Solicitor Jane Bauer, mitigating, said: “He is not a man who deliberately set out to flout the law.
“He simply made a very foolish decision to drive very a short distance at a time when he was consumed with grief and not thinking very clearly.”
Mrs Bauer said Esteban had no intention to leave the scene of the accident, he simply moved the car into the car park of the care home where he works as a carer because it wasn’t safe for other road users to leave it where it was.