A scaffolder was caught drug driving in his Mercedes Benz by the police days apart, in a case described by the judge as “unusual”.

Louis Clifford, of Harewood Road, St George in Bristol, “takes comfort in alcohol and drugs” after personal tragedy but is said by the judge to have learned his lesson "the hard way".

He appeared in Swindon Magistrates’ Court on November 19 charged with two counts of drug driving which he already pleaded guilty to.

He was first caught on April 2, 2024, driving his Mercedes Benz C250 with 32 micrograms of cocaine in his blood - the limit being 10 micrograms.

Clifford, now 26, was pulled over on Malmesbury Road in Chippenham by police who saw him driving erratically and knew him to be a drug user.

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Four days later on April 6, police pulled him over again after noticing his dark window tints on Springfield Road in Swindon, and found him to be over the limit for benzoylecgonine (BZE) in the same car.

A blood test showed 418 micrograms of the drug per litre of his blood - four times the legal limit of 50 micrograms.

Benzoylecgonine is the main metabolite of cocaine and is naturally formed in the body after someone has taken cocaine.

This led district judge Joanna Dickens to suspect that the illegal level of BZE on the second occasion was the result of the earlier cocaine use.

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Dickens said: “Either way the police should have told you about that and you should not have been driving on drugs on a second occasion.

“When I first saw it, I thought, he's drug driving one time, and he's drug driving again, that's incredibly serious but actually looking at the fact that it's an unusual case. It sounds like you've learned a lesson about drug driving in the hard way.”

Abbie Winters, prosecuting for the CPS, said Clifford previously had a 16-month ban for drink driving in 2020.

She said “he sadly lost his son in a road traffic collision and finds comfort in drugs and alcohol”, but Clifford says he has not touched “anything” in four and a half months.

Clifford was also charged with failing to provide information about a driver on July 9 in Swindon and not following traffic signals on June 5 in Chippenham, but these were withdrawn.

Louis Clifford was fined £1,000, with a £400 victim surcharge and £85 costs - a total of £1,485. He is banned from driving for three years until October 27, 2027.

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