A man who plowed into the back of an RCMP vehicle while drunk and then tried to flee was prohibited Wednesday from driving for a year.
Alfred Prudnikov, 23, was also sentenced to one year probation with a suspended sentence and fined $2,000 plus $700 in victim surcharges for the late-night Sept. 21, 2018 incident on Frenkel Road in Beaverley, west of the city.
In sentencing Prudnikov, provincial court judge Cassandra Malfair accepted a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels after Prudnikov pleaded guilt to one count each of driving with a blood-alcohol level over .08 and fleeing police.
The move was made after Malfair dismissed in February a claim that Prudnikov's Charter rights had been violated in the subsequent arrest.
According to a summary, three RCMP officers were in the area trying to locate a priority offender with outstanding warrants. By about 11:30 p.m., two of the officers had parked on either side of Frenkel Road and as they sat in their fully-marked sport utility vehicles with their interior and exterior lights on, Prudnikov ran his small car into the back of one of them.
He then pulled a U-turn and tried to flee but one of the officers rammed the car into a ditch.
Prudnikov, who had drank enough while visiting a friend nearby to register blood-alcohol levels of .13 and .14, was just 100 metres away from his home when the collision occurred.
As a result, Prudnikov was issued a 90-day immediate roadside driving prohibition and lost his job as a chip truck driver.
One of the officers was injured in the collision but not to the level for which Prudnikov would have been found guilty of drunk driving causing bodily harm, the court heard. He had no previous criminal or driving offences to his name and has expressed remorse for his actions, it was also noted.
