A teenage girl crashed her father’s company car into a neighbour’s kitchen, causing more than £30,000-worth of damage.
When 17-year-old Macauley Hall came home drunk from a friend’s house, she wanted to listen to some music, to get her ready for a late-night party, the Northern Echo reports.
To avoid waking her parents, who were sleeping upstairs, she took the keys to her dad’s company-issue Volkswagen Passat and tried to turn on the car radio.
But the teen, who could not drive and was nearly double the legal alcohol limit, managed to put the automatic vehicle into reverse and crash it into a neighbour’s garden wall.
Panicking, Hall then tried to drive the car back to its original position. However, it accelerated and crashed into a neighbouring house, ending up in the kitchen.
Fortunately, the house was unoccupied at the time, but the episode caused more than £30,000 of damage to the house, wall and car.
And, for her trouble, Hall suffered a broken wrist and shoulder. She got out of the car but collapsed a few feet away.
The incident happened at about midnight on Saturday, March 1, on Dean Terrace, Shotton Colliery, east Durham.
Hall, now 18 and based at a YMCA hostel on Toward Road, Sunderland, pleaded guilty to careless driving, taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent, drink driving and driving without a licence or insurance.
Judge Christopher Prince said she had been out of control and a danger to herself and others. Sentencing, he told the teenager: “You were extremely foolish. You could have hurt or killed yourself or other people.”
Hall was given a 12-month community order with supervision and alcohol treatment requirements and banned from driving for two years.
Bianca Castafiore - 05/08/2014 12:10
'she took the keys to her dad’s company-issue Volkswagen Passat and tried to turn on the car radio.' Yeah right! Not to drive it of course, just to listen to the music! 'I thought the big lever in the middle was the volume slider m'Lud, honest.....'