A DRINK driver spent five hours boozing in a pub before crashing his van twice within minutes.

Graham Hignett, from Great Sankey, was more than double the legal limit for alcohol when he smashed his vehicle into parked cars and railings during two separate incidents in the early hours.

Warrington Magistrates Court heard on Wednesday, January 12, that police received reports of the Mercedes Sprinter colliding with a Mazda and a Vauxhall on Tankersley Grove in Hood Manor shortly after 1am on Sunday, October 31.

CCTV footage later showed the white van travelling on the wrong side of the road ‘at high speed’ ahead of the impact.

The same vehicle then crashed into railings at a pedestrian crossing on Lingley Green Avenue in Great Sankey.

Eyewitnesses reported that Hignett, of Lytham Close, had attempted to reverse out of the street furniture but failed to do so and fled.

His mobile phone was discovered inside the van, and he was discovered nearby minutes later in the company of a woman.

After being arrested, the 36-year-old was breathalysed and found to have 87 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath – the legal limit being 35mg.

Magistrates were told that ‘significant damage was caused’ to both of the cars and the railings.

Representing himself in court, Hignett stated that he had spent around five hours in the Seven Woods pub in Westbrook on the night in question and had consumed ‘seven or eight drinks’.

He then ‘got talking to a girl’ who could not get a taxi and offered to drive her home.

The defendant added: “I made the rash decision to drive.

“When I hit the two parked cars I panicked.”

Hignett, who has no previous convictions, lost his business supplying fruit machines and pool tables to pubs and clubs as a result of his actions and is now unemployed.

He admitted drink driving and three counts of failing to stop after an accident during an earlier hearing and was handed a 12-month community order with 200 hours of unpaid work.

Magistrates also banned him from driving for 22 months and told him to pay a victim surcharge of £95 plus £85 in court costs, to be deducted from his benefits at a rate of £5 per week.