TAKING a cocktail of drugs and alcohol before driving through the streets of March landed Daniel Stimson with a six month suspended jail sentence this week.

Stimson, 31, had taken heroin, methadone and temazepam, and had drunk a pint of lager before he was found asleep behind the wheel in Creek Fen Road.

He had earlier put the car in a ditch – but after it was retrieved, Stimson drove around until the car ran out of petrol.

“He fell asleep while waiting for a friend to bring him more fuel,” Fenland magistrates were told by Andrea Fawcett, prosecuting.

Stimson, 31, of Creek Road, March, had earlier admitted driving a Vauxhall Vectra on October 31 when unfit through drugs.

“This was a high level of impairment,” admitted solicitor John Clarke. “He told the probation service he had become spaced out.”

Mr Clarke said Stimson’s wife had tried to commit suicide two days earlier, he was worried about the possibility of their son being taken into care, and things “really got on top of him.”

Mr Clarke added: “They are now together as a family. He is involved with Addaction; he is very concerned that if social services think he is taking drugs, they will take his son away. I don’t think this drug problem will happen again, it was a one off.”

The court gave Stimson a six month suspended jail sentence for the drugs offence and an earlier offence of assault; he will be supervised by the probation service for two years, and must continue with the domestic abuse programme. The court banned him from driving for two years and ordered him to pay �85 costs.