A drunk ex-Para was caught behind the wheel of a Nissan on the A420 – with a young child in the car.
Police had been alerted to Francis Ballyntyne’s ‘dangerous’ driving on the Oxford to Swindon road on July 6, with reports of his X-trail 4x4 ‘swerving’ in the road.
When they caught up with the 51-year-old Parachute Regiment veteran near Faringdon, he was stumbling and slurring the words. There was a child, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, in the car with him.
Prosecuting, Elona Panxha told Oxford Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday (August 1) that a breath test at the police station showed Ballyntyne had 90 mcgs of alcohol in 100ml of breath, more than twice the drink-drive limit of 35.
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He was also found to be driving while disqualified, having been banned from the roads for three years in September 2022.
This week, defence advocate Charlotte Frizzell said her client recognised his difficulties with alcohol. Since pleading guilty last month to disqualified driving, drink driving, driving without insurance and being drunk in charge of a child, he had been prescribed medication by his GP preventing his body from accepting alcohol. He was looking at getting an implant that, in a similar way, would prevent him from drinking.
Ms Frizzell said her client had spent 16 years in the British Army, serving in the Parachute Regiment and Intelligence Corps, and had ‘witnessed a lot of devastation’.
There had been a ‘culture of drinking’ in the regiment, with alcohol used as a coping mechanism. He had continued drinking to excess after leaving the forces.
Ballyntyne, of River Way, Christchurch, Dorset, was given an 18 month community order with 150 hours of unpaid work, a nine month alcohol treatment requirement and must go on the thinking skills programme. He was disqualified from driving for a further 45 months.
Sentencing, chairman of the magistrates’ bench Jane Drury said: “It was a daft thing to do. I think you will, hopefully, have learnt your lesson.”
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