It broke a district judge\u2019s heart to dismiss charges against a suspected drink driver who was extremely abusive to garda\u00ed and paramedics in front of hospital patients at an emergency unit but he said he had to do so.<\/p>\n
Judge John King said that, if he could have, he would have jailed Lloyd Cambridge.<\/p>\n
Extensive evidence was given at a contested case heard in Cork District Court of\u00a0 Cambridge abusing garda\u00ed at the scene of an accident where his car was found overturned on its roof in the middle of the road at St Anne\u2019s Rd, Tower, Blarney, Co Cork, at around 11.30 p.m. on April 13, 2023.<\/p>\n
Cambridge, aged 37, of 36 Closes Road, Farranree, Cork, was so uncooperative and abusive to paramedics at the scene that a member of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na had to travel with them for the protection of the ambulance crew.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge King was told that the defendant told one garda: “Shut up you useless fucking c***”, when she was trying to assist him.<\/p>\n
Asked if he had driven the crashed car, Cambridge said, \u201cI told you, you dopey c*** that I had drink taken and I was driving. I f***ing told you. What kind of stupid c*** are you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the emergency unit of Cork University Hospital the evidence was that the defendant said in front of patients and hospital staff to the garda\u00ed and paramedics, \u201cYou horrible fucks, I hope ye die, ye\u2019re horrible c***s.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge King heard more evidence along those lines in the case where the defendant pleaded not guilty to engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour at the hospital and refusing to give a sample of blood or urine for the investigation of suspected driving while intoxicated.<\/p>\n
At the close of the prosecution case, defence solicitor Daith\u00ed \u00d3 Donnabh\u00e1in made an application to have those charges dismissed because he said the charges referred to April 13, 2023, but that it was after midnight and that the date should have been April 14, 2023.<\/p>\n
Judge King said: \u201cIt does break my heart but there is a fundamental defect in the evidence and I dismiss those charges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the judge convicted him on counts of driving without a licence and failing to produce his insurance certificate to garda\u00ed in the required time, as the April 13, 2023, date was correct in respect of those matters.<\/p>\n
Judge King said he was entitled to take the overall evidence into consideration when penalising him for those charges although those counts did not carry a possible prison sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a very bad attitude. He is lucky I don\u2019t have the right to impose a prison sentence. If I did, he would be going to prison,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
He fined him \u20ac800 for failing to produce his insurance and fined him another \u20ac800 for driving without a licence.<\/p>\n
Given the overall context, the judge said he was going to make an ancillary order in this case and he disqualified Cambridge from driving for the next four years.<\/p>\n
Mr \u00d3 Donnabh\u00e1in said the defendant was fortunate not to have been killed that night as a result of his own driving \u2014 and that he spent a week in hospital being treated for his injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It broke a district judge\u2019s heart to dismiss charges against a suspected drink driver who was extremely abusive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,54,61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-2409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cork-news","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}