AN ambulance boss unmasked as a murderer after he was convicted of drink-driving has been cleared of the motoring offence because of a laboratory blunder.
A judge quashed Robert King’s conviction despite earlier evidence that he had been three times the drink-drive limit when he crashed his South Central Ambulance Service fast response car into a shop in Woodstock Road in Oxford.
He had been sentenced to be electronically tagged for four months, banned from driving for 28 months and told to pay £1,000 costs.
However, King was yesterday told his sentence and conviction would be quashed because the wrong batch of blood was handed to a defence-enlisted expert by scientists working for the prosecution, Oxford Crown Court was told.
After Judge Gordon Risius quashed the conviction because of the error by LGC Forensics, the prosecution was unable to offer any other evidence and the charge was dismissed.
Asked if he would apply to get his job back, King, 48, said: “I just want to get on with my life.”
It was only after the drink-drive conviction that the ambulance service discovered King, of Merton Road, Ambrosden, had kept secret his conviction for murder in 1981.
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