SINGAPORE - He was driving after consuming alcohol and panicked when he saw a police road block.
Afraid that he would fail the breathanalyser test, Lee Chee Yong - who had a previous conviction for drink driving - stopped his Porsche and reversed for about a car's length in Whampoa East in the early hours of Jan 25, 2016. A car behind had to reverse and avoid a collision with Lee's Porshe.
The 40-year-old senior group division director at a real estate company then sped off in a different direction. Two traffic police officers gave chase and tailed him to an open-air carpark in Bendemeer Road.
He got out of his car and was stopped by the officers. When questioned, he claimed that he was walking to a nearby McDonald's outlet.
Lee, who was reeking of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes, failed the breathanalyser test and was arrested. A breath evidential analyser test showed that he had 58mg of alcohol in every 100ml of breath. This exceeded the 35mg legal limit.
Lee gave a false statement to a traffic police inspector, saying that someone named Joe had driven his car. The person was his colleague Koh Yan Leng, a 41-year-old real estate agent who was jailed for two weeks in December last year for lying that he was the driver of the Porsche.
On Friday (Jan 26), Lee, who had a similar conviction in 2009, was jailed for three weeks, fined $5,000 and banned from driving for 42 months.
He was given another three weeks' jail, to run consecutively, for lying to a public servant and fined $600 for driving without reasonable consideration.
Lee's lawyer S. S. Dhillon said in his mitigation plea that his client has been a senior group division director at ERA Realty Network for the past nine years, and is in charge of 300 property agents.
Lee could have been fined up to $10,000 and jailed for up to 12 months for repeat drink driving. He could have been fined up to $1,000 and/or jailed for up to six months for inconsiderate driving, and jailed for up to one year and/or fined up to $5,000 for giving false information to a public servant.
