A NURSE on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic was drunk in charge of a car but was spared a longer driving ban because of her important role.

Justyna Kabacinska admitted being drunk in charge of her Seat Leon, in Tolladine Road, Worcester when she appeared before city magistrates yesterday. Prosecutor Kerry Lovegrove said the defendant’s then partner had taken her car keys from her during the incident at 6.25pm on April 24 this year. The 40-year-old mother-of-three of Mountbatten Road, Malvern had 119mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath, close to three and a half times the limit.

Miss Lovegrove said the defendant’s now ex-partner had called police when Kabacinska arrived at his home ‘intoxicated’, describing the offence as ‘the top of the bracket’ because of the high alcohol reading. She said: “Police officers got there and noticed she appeared to be heavily intoxicated. She was unsteady on her feet, her eyes were glazed and she smelled of alcohol.”

The defendant’s ex-partner handed police the car keys, ‘fearing she would drive away’. Judith Kenney, defending, said Kabacinska had been distraught following the argument with her ex and was ‘trying to hang onto a relationship in its dying embers’. She had ‘worked very hard over the Covid period’ in a nursing home near Upton for 25 residents. “She is full of remorse in bucket loads” said Ms Kenney.

The court heard that the Polish national had been in the UK for 12 years and had no previous convictions aside from a mobile phone offence for which she received six points on her licence last December.

She was ordered to pay a fine of £276, a victim surcharge of £32 and costs of £135. She was banned from driving for three months instead of six months, magistrates taking into account her ‘occupation in these troubling times.’