A WAREHOUSE operative told a police officer a half empty can of lager in his car was “from the previous day” before being charged with drink driving.

Deivydas Stankevicius, 27, of Albert Avenue in Flint, had been spotted by a police officer shortly after 11pm on New Year’s Eve, driving his silver Volkswagen Golf.

He was observed taking a junction “too fast” close to the train station on Chester Road and the car “jittered” as Stankevicius missed his gear.

The police followed him for a short distance, before he stopped on an unnamed road a short while later and the defendant exited the vehicle.

Rhian Jackson, prosecuting, told Mold Magistrates Court how police found a half empty can of lager in the inside pocket of the driver’s door and when asked about what it was doing there, Stankevicius told them “it was there from the previous day”.

After providing a road side breath test, Stankevicius, a man of previous good character, was taken to Llay custody suite, where he provided officers with two further samples, the lowest of which providing a reading of 90 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath.

Emma Simoes, defending, told the court that the reading had just fallen into the third category of drink drive offences and that her client should be given full credit for his early guilty plea. She told the Deputy District Judge that she hoped he would be able to deal with the matter by way of a community order.

Probation Tracey Flavell agreed with that assessment, telling the court how Stankevicius, who had moved to the UK from his native Lithuania some three years before, had been drinking more than he normally would as he had been off work over the Christmas period.

She went on to say how he hadn’t considered he would be over the drink drive limit and that he hadn’t had a drink for at least ten hours.

Deputy District Judge Huw Edwards told Stankevicius that he would be given full credit for his early guilty plea and the fact this had been his first ever appearance before the courts.

He told him that driving on a public road having had too much alcohol was “dangerous to both yourself and other road users”.

He banned him from driving for a period of two years and told him he must complete 60 hours of unpaid work.