Drink-driving dad caught veering over the road with kids and wife in car after wedding

A drink-driving father with his young children and wife in the car was pulled over by Leicestershire Police after attending a wedding in Leicester. Eddie Rodrigues, 44, was nearly three times the limit as he took the family to their hotel.

Cars honking at him on the Red Hill Circle in Belgrave drew the officers' attention to Rodrigues's Suzuki Alto and they observed him swerving between lanes and knocking into a kerb. He was pulled over by the officers in Beaumont Leys Lane and arrested for drink-driving after failing a roadside breath test.

At a police station he gave a breathalyser reading of 81 microgrammes of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

READ MORE: Air ambulance called to Leicester kids football tournament after grandad collapses

At Leicester Magistrates' Court on Monday (May 20), he pleaded guilty to drink-driving on Sunday, May 5. Prosecutor Richard Holt told the court: "On the Red Hill roundabout he was being beeped by other road users as he was veering between the lanes.

"He hit a nearside kerb, stopped in a layby and then drove on. He was coming back from a wedding and had his children, aged eight and 10, and his partner in the car."

Steve Morris, representing Rodrigues, of Uxbridge Road, Slough, Berkshire, said: "It was his niece's wedding and he had booked a hotel a short distance from the wedding venue. He had stopped drinking for a couple of hours thinking he would be under the limit.

"But he was clearly wrong."

Rodrigues, who works as a security officer at Heathrow Airport, was fined and banned from driving for 20 months. He has to pay a £461 fine, a £184 victim surcharge and £85 court costs.

The chair of the bench, Jane Morton-Humphries, told him: "You were borderline three times over the legal limit with children - your own children, in fact - in the car. Your manner of driving left a lot to be desired."