Shropshire Star

Jailed: Shrewsbury drug-driver caught at wheel for a second time

A Shrewsbury businessman caught drug driving only weeks after being banned for the same offence has been jailed.

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Hubert Cadenne-de-Lannoy, 39, of Wyle Cop, was caught driving while under the influence of cocaine and NZT, on April 9.

At the time he was disqualified from driving and uninsured because he had been convicted of two charges of drug driving on March 18, for which he was fined and banned from driving for three years.

The latest offence also put Cadenne-de-Lannoy in breach of a suspended sentence order issued by Mold Crown Court on March 8.

Cadenne-de-Lannoy had pleaded guilty to fraud and admitted to diverting more than £23,000 worth of orders and materials from his employer, Dyfed Steel in Newtown, into a new company he had set up called Agri Steels.

As a result he had been given a 16-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 180 hours unpaid work and pay just over £23,000 compensation.

Sentencing for the latest offence, Recorder Martin Jackson listed a series of previous driving convictions and said: "You are someone who flagrantly breached a disqualification imposed on March 18 by driving on April 9.

"Not only did you breach it, you drove under the influence of drugs, again in a very short space of time."

He added: "I would be failing in my duty if I merely said, 'here's another suspended sentence'."

The court had earlier heard that Cadenne-de-Lannoy had also breached his suspended sentence order by failing to attend community service appointments.

Mitigating, Paul Smith, had said that the offence in April was Cadenne-de-Lannoy "hitting rock bottom".

The court had heard that Cadenne-de-Lannoy had been stopped by police in Ellesmere Road on April 9, and was found to have 62 microgrammes of cocaine in 100 millilitres of blood, and 304 microgrammes of NZT in 100 millilitres of blood – the legal limit for both is 50.

During sentencing Recorder Jackson had said that Cadenne-de-Lannoy had appeared to struggle from the beginning with his suspended sentence.

In total Cadenne-de-Lannoy pleaded guilty to two charges of drug driving, one charge of driving while disqualified, one charge of driving with no insurance, and another of breaching his suspended sentence order.

He was sentenced to 18 weeks in jail – eight weeks for the breach of his suspended sentence, 10 weeks for driving while disqualified, 10 weeks concurrent for drug driving, and no separate penalty for driving with no insurance.

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