A man who was arrested for driving with more than twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood was fined last Thursday in Princeton court and given a one-year license suspension.
Kenneth Hixson pleaded guilty to having care or control of a vehicle while impaired, and Judge Michelle Daneliuk acknowledged he had “somewhat sympathetic personal circumstances.”
Hixson was pulled over by a Princeton RCMP officer, after the detachment was alerted to a possible drunk driver heading from Manning Park towards Princeton on Highway 3, on May 1, 2018.
A woman, who had stopped to pull Hixson and his vehicle out of a ditch, called police when he jumped back into his car and drove away as she suspected he had been drinking.
Court heard that when he was taken into custody Hixson was “unsteady on his feet and could not stand without swaying.”
Kathryn Lundman, duty counsel, told the court that several months previous to his arrest Hixson had been injured when a aerosol can in a campfire exploded.
He spent two weeks in a burn unit, developed a staph infection, and later became depressed, she said. Hixson, who had a previous conviction for a related offense in 2000, was fined $1,500.