A forklift truck driver for Aldi begged not to be sent to prison after just securing his job - and he was due on shift at 4pm on Tuesday, January 10. Despite Simon Brady's desperate plea, "please don't send me to prison", he was locked up for five months at Nottingham Magistrates' Court.
But, later in the day, his lawyer, Colin Wilson, lodged an appeal against sentence, and the judge granted Brady bail, pending a date for his appeal at Nottingham Crown Court. It came after the 43-year-old, of Plumtree Road, Cotgrave, said from the dock: "I have just got a job...I have turned my life around."
But District Judge Leo Pyle had told him: "The rules of the road apply to you like everybody else and, if you continue to flout them, you face the consequences." Brady pleaded guilty to disqualified driving in Manvers Street, Sneinton, and having no insurance. This meant he was in breach of a suspended prison sentence for disqualified driving.
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Judge Pyle had activated the suspended sentence for four weeks and added four months consecutively for disqualified driving - Brady's seventh conviction for this type of offence. His licence will be endorsed for having no insurance - the eighth such offence on his record.
A driving ban was imposed for 16 months, and a victim surcharge of £187. Mr Wilson, of Bhatia Best, said Brady had handed himself in on Monday evening, January 9.
"The offence itself, he tells me, was as long a go as May," said Mr Wilson. "He accepted a lift off a lady who turned out to be unfit to drive and he took the decision to take over and give her a short lift home. That's how the offence came about."
Brady had been working for Aldi through an agency but, on New Year's Day, he got his first employment contract with them and has been "turning his life around," added Mr Wilson. Brady had had been working as a forklift truck driver for a regional distribution centre and should have been at work at 4pm.
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