Repeat drink-driving mum Melanie Susan Trebilco will be allowed to keep her car, but she must undergo treatment and counselling for alcohol, grief, and trauma during a supervision sentence.
Forty-year-old Trebilco, of Hei Hei, was disqualified indefinitely and placed on supervision for 15 months by Christchurch Community Magistrate Leigh Langridge after admitting her second breath-alcohol charge.
Police had sought to confiscate her Honda Fit which she was driving on the day she was breath-tested at Rolleston with a level of 871mcg of alcohol to a litre of breath. The legal limit is 250mcg.
However, Trebilco filed an application to be allowed to keep the car because of the hardship its loss would cause to another family member – her daughter – and the community magistrate agreed.
Trebilco has a previous conviction for drink-driving from 2016 when she was caught with her two children aged three and nine in the backseat at a time when she had a reading of 1157mcg. She admitted that it was “just stupidity” that she was driving with the children.
Last time, she was warned by the same community magistrate that if she was back in court, the penalty would be far more severe.
She was caught again on March 2 this year, on Rolleston Drive, when she told the police she had been drinking wine with friends to celebrate her birthday.
Community Magistrate Langridge said at the Christchurch District Court sentencing that it was clear that Trebilco was “struggling with alcohol”. It also seemed there were underlying issues, and she may be using alcohol to “numb or stop the panic”.
She disqualified Trebilco from driving indefinitely – she will not be able to get her licence back for at least a year, when the Land Transport Authority agrees, and she will be on supervision with special conditions for 15 months.
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