A MOTORIST has admitted three charges of drug driving – on York’s shortest street.
CCTV showed Stephen Jamie Ferguson, 41, driving onto Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate, in the city centre, and parking on it in the early hours of June 9, said Natalie Chapman, prosecuting.
At 3.30am, police found him slumped over the steering wheel so unconscious it took them several attempts to wake him.
Tests revealed he had three drugs in his system: cocaine, benzoylecgonine and diazepam, York magistrates heard.
Ferguson, of Disraeli Close, Huntington, was banned from driving for 12 months, fined £125 with £85 prosecution costs and a £30 statutory surcharge.
For him, Lee-Anne Robins-Hicks said: “He didn’t feel unfit to drive when he set off that day. He wouldn’t have done so if he had felt unfit to drive.”
Ferguson had gone into the city centre to get some cash out of a cashpoint machine.
He had felt sleepy because he hadn’t had anything to eat so he stopped to get some food from a burger bar.
The cocaine was the only illegal drug in his system as he had prescriptions for the others.
Ms Chapman said Ferguson had left the car briefly after parking it. After he returned a member of the public saw him slumped over the wheel and called police.
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