A 55-year-old Victorian man has been sentenced after being caught 10 times over the legal drinking limit while behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
James Selkirk, of Ballarat, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of driving under the influence and careless driving.<\/p>\n
Selkirk was arrested and charged after “crashing into” a Ballarat private property in October 2024.<\/p>\n
After being taken to hospital, a routine blood alcohol test revealed Selkirk had a reading of 0.533.<\/p>\n
Victoria’s legal drinking limit for full-licensed drivers is less than 0.05.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Julia Barling commented on the remarkably high recording in a Ballarat courtroom on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
“This is by far the highest reading I have ever seen,” she said.<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old undertook a blood alcohol test in October 2024, where he was found to be 10 times over the legal limit. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)<\/p>\n
Ms Barling noted Selkirk’s “long-term history with alcohol” and praised him for the treatment he undertook in the past year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I am pleased to see \u2026 Mr Selkirk has engaged in detoxication and Alcoholics Anonymous,” she said.<\/p>\n
“[It seems] he is in a better place since this offending.”<\/p>\n
Selkirk’s legal counsel David Tamanika told the court his client would be returning to full-time work in education shortly.<\/p>\n
Ms Barling cancelled Selkirk’s licence for three years and ordered him to complete a three-year community corrections order, but did not record a conviction against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She ended the sentencing hearing with a warning to the Ballarat man that if he was caught drink-driving again, he would be jailed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 55-year-old Victorian man has been sentenced after being caught 10 times over the legal drinking limit while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[23321,64,63,2973,48,34155,23817,161189,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-277848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-alcohol","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-drink-driving","14":"tag-driving","15":"tag-james-selkirk","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}