Premi Herjuss Sandhu was found guilty of dangerous driving and fleeing from a police officer, but acquitted for impaired driving. (file photo/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

mixed drinks

Nanaimo man acquitted of impaired driving despite not remembering drive home and police pursuit

Aug 27, 2020 | 11:32 AM

NANAIMO — A man who doesn’t remember ignoring two red lights and refusing to pull over after consuming alcohol and pain medication avoided an impaired driving conviction.

Premi Herjuss Sandhu was instead convicted of dangerous driving and fleeing police and awaits his punishment from judge Ted Gouge, whose ruling stems from a 2017 incident in which the offender has no recollection of what happened.

Sandhu, 32-years-old at the time, sped away Carlos O’Bryan’s Pub on March 30, 2017 after racking up a sizable bill an hour earlier and then taking 300 mg of the prescribed painkiller Gabapentin for a back ailment.

Pub staff said they saw Sandhu drinking with a friend but didn’t appear intoxicated and was lucid when he left shortly after 9 p.m.. However, when he was seen again returning to his car around 10 p.m., the bar supervisor said he was “staggering and weaving from side to side.”

He got into his white Cadillac and sat in the drivers seat for approximately 20 minutes before he left the pub’s parking lot.

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Police were immediately notified by a pub supervisor and a police cruiser’s lights and then siren were activated.

Sandhu kept speeding through red lights on Stewart Ave. and Terminal Ave., gathering speed of upwards of 100 km/h.

He drove fast enough police had to back off the pursuit and instead tracked the Cadillac to the address it was registered to.

Vomit and Sandhu’s license were found by police in the car.

Sandhu testified he has no memory of the night from the time he took the 300 mg of prescribed painkiller after he paid his tab at Carlos O’Bryans.

Escaping the impaired driving charge was linked to whether Sandhu knew he wasn’t supposed to mix his medication with booze.

Sandhu was asked directly when testifying if he ever inquired about the side effects of taking his prescribed Gabapentin while drinking.

He said he never asked and he was never warned about it.

“I knew with morphine and stronger (drugs) that you don’t drink with those pills…but I figured since this pill is working differently that it didn’t matter,” he testified.

The bottle of Gabapentin given to Sandhu was one of the few pieces of evidence submitted in his trial. The label does not warn of mixing the drugs with alcohol but does mention a leaflet containing more information.

“Mr. Sandhu was not asked whether he was given a copy of the leaflet or whether he asked for one,” the decision from judge Gouge said. “The leaflet was not tendered in evidence.”

In his decision, Gouge said he accepted the fact Sandhu didn’t remember the incident due to the mistake of mixing prescription pills and alcohol.

However, “there is no evidence to support an inference that Mr. Sandhu actually knew the risk associated with taking Gabapentin with alcohol” and there was no evidence he kept himself wilfully ignorant to the effects of such a combination.

Gouge stated Crown Counsel did not properly convince the court Sandhu would have learned about the serous issue if he’d asked. No doctor or pharmacist was called to the stand to give evidence about what advice would be given if someone asked about mixing.

He’s not in custody and is set to be sentenced on Oct. 5, 2020.

Judge Gouge’s ruling was made in provincial court in Nanaimo on Aug. 19.

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