A TEENAGER flipped a car full of his friends into a ditch after drinking too much at a party. Jobless George Grint, 18, crashed his Ford Focus on a bend in the A1123 between Haddenham and Aldreth on June 14. I was at a friend s house, I didn t realise

A TEENAGER flipped a car full of his friends into a ditch after drinking too much at a party.

Jobless George Grint, 18, crashed his Ford Focus on a bend in the A1123 between Haddenham and Aldreth on June 14.

"I was at a friend's house, I didn't realise how much I'd had, I didn't think about it," Grint told the court. He had been driving for less than a year and has just finished a bricklaying course at Cambridge Regional College.

Police arrived to find around 12 youths milling around three vehicles which had stopped at the scene. Some had to be carried from the car with seatbelt injuries, and Grint, from Fen Road, Cambridge, escaped with a cut lip and grazing. He admitted he was drunk and when breathalysed was 20mcg over the limit.

"You appear to be a very lucky young man, in that if someone had been hurt it would have been with you for the rest of your life," magistrate Bryant Watson said, sentencing.

Grint pleaded guilty to a charge of drink-driving and magistrates disqualified him for 12 months, fined him £200, plus £70 costs and imposed a mandatory £15 victim surcharge. Grint was offered a drink-drive awareness course which will reduce his ban by three months if he completes it.