Gosport 'shambolic drunk drug-riddled' dad forced young son to take diazepam, said he'd be raped and crashed car

The intoxicated Gosport dad, 31, forced his 10-year-old son to take three diazepam pills on the day he issued the grim threat in a drunken car journey home. He was hitting kerbs and swerving – driving for a mile with a tyre missing.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard another driver who alerted police followed him home and saw in horror that the young boy was slumped in the front garden.

‘Distressed’ police who arrived found the boy inside the home unsteady on his feet and falling into furniture, while the dad smelled of alcohol and had ‘blue on his lips’.

Blood tests revealed the man had forced his son to take diazepam, with the boy telling officers his dad said it would ‘help to calm him down’.

Officers found a tube of 237 pills of the ‘potent’ designer drug flubromazepam in his possession. These cause ‘strong sedation’ when taken, a judge said.

Prosecutor Josh Scouller revealed the man gave another teenage male relative a diazepam pill following his arrest.

The shamed defendant had stayed with extended family while on bail and was drinking alcohol and ‘munching’ the class C drug himself.

Mr Scouller said the dangerous driving happened last year when he had taken his son home from school following a confrontation with teachers.

On the journey the dad had warned his son about the allegations made to teachers. Mr Scouller said: ‘He accused (his son) of being a liar and he’d go to prison later on in life where he’d be raped by men.’

Judge Roger Hetherington jailed the man for a year, saying it was an ‘exceptionally dangerous piece of driving’.

The judge said he would be ‘failing in my duty if I did not meet these circumstances with an immediate custodial sentence’ due to the combination of the bad driving and supplying children with drugs.

‘You were found to be swerving all over the road, mounting kerbs, continuing on and then as a result – no doubt hitting kerbs and bits of street furniture, the tyre came off one of your wheels causing a horrendous noise,’ the judge said.

He added: ‘You nevertheless continued on, the tyre off, so driving simply on the steel of the wheel for a distance which is put at certainly one mile and is said by the prosecution to have extended to two miles.’

The judge said it was a ‘very bad case’ of dangerous driving, and a back calculation done by analysts put the man over the drink-drive limit at the time.

READ NEXT: Portsmouth brewery Staggeringly Good recalls 5,000 cans after some explode

The man admitted dangerous driving, possession of cannabis, a class B drug, possession with intent to supply a class C drug and two charges of supplying a class C drug relating to the diazepam.

Richard Onslow, mitigating, said the man had spent £8,500 on rehabilitating himself and had changed.

‘Plainly this man was a shambolic drunk drug-riddled mess (at the time),’ he said.

The man was banned from driving for 30 months and must take an extended retest to drive again.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

You can subscribe here for unlimited access to Portsmouth news online - as well as fewer adverts, access to our digital edition and mobile app.

Our trial offer starts at just £2 a month for the first two months.