27-year-old G. Mohanavarooman Gopal Oyyappan earlier pleaded guilty to four charges including drink driving, driving dangerously and causing grievous hurt and driving without a valid Class 3 or 3A license.
He also pleaded guilty to a separate charge of voluntarily causing hurt after punching a customer at a coffeeshop fight in January 2020.
He was sentenced on 5 September to 2 years imprisonment as well as a fine of $4,000, as well as being banned from driving for 10 years.
He has driven his boss’ private ambulance for an hour while drunk, having twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, and crashing the vehicle on the Seletar Expressway.
His passenger had also been drinking inside the vehicle, and suffered fractured ribs from the accident.
What happened?
Mohan and another 29-year-old, Aravindraj Manohar, were employees of I. M. Ambulance Service, a private ambulance provider.
Mohan was a medic while Aravin was a driver for the company.
on 6 July 2020 at about 8.45pm, the two went to a carpark at Bukit Batok to rest after their work, and Mohan bought 4 cans of beer for them to drink inside the ambulance until 10pm.
He later bought some more beer and vodka and told Aravin that the drinks were for his friend, and the two then fetched someone from Corporation Road to Bukit Batok Care Home before resuming their drinking until 11.15pm.
Aravin then allowed Mohan to drive the ambulance to his (Mohan’s) grandmother’s home .
Mohan then picked up a female friend at Garden Inn at about 1am and after Aravin left the ambulance, Mohan and his female friend then started drinking before he drove the ambulance from 1.30am to 2.30am.
Mohan drove dangerously, including driving against traffic flow at Hougang Street 22 and beating the red light at the junction of Philips Avenue and Yio Chu Kang road.
He then made a few lane changes before ultimately crashing the ambulance along the SLE into the guard rails, and the ambulance then toppled and skidded along the expressway.
His friend couldn’t move from her seat as her leg was stuck after the accident, and when the police arrived, one of the officers saw Mohan walking around the ambulance and panicking, as well as smelling strongly of alcohol and walking unsteadily.
Mohan then lied to the officer saying that his female friend was the driver, before begging her in Tamil to help him – he showed no concern for her as she was screaming in pain, and told her to lie that she was the driver instead.
He later failed a breathalyser test and was subsequently arrested – his test readings showed that he had 183mg of alcohol per 100ml or blood, which is more than twice the legal limit of 80mg/100ml
The woman suffered fractures to her lower ribs and was given 38 days of hospitalisation leave.