By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A man caught speeding at twice the limit told intercepting police that he was “busting” for the toilet, a court has heard.
Mustapha Sillah pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at 177 km/h in an 80 km/h section of Princes Highway, Springvale shortly after midnight on 28 April.
Sillah, who was driving a white Nissan Skyline at the time, allegedly said to police: “I was busting to have a s***”.
Or as magistrate Pauline Spencer described it in Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 23 July – “he was having an emergency”.
His defence lawyer said the excuse wasn’t strictly true but was a “panicked” response.
“He was put on the spot and panicked – and threw the line out there.”
The truth was Sillah rushed home out of worry for his feverishly-ill mother, the lawyer said.
He argued that it was careless rather than dangerous driving. At the time, the road was “virtually empty”, he said.
Police countered that Sillah’s speed posed a “huge risk to other motorists” on a stretch of highway with service lanes and intersecting side roads.
Magistrate Spencer agreed. The driving was dangerous “even if there’s no other cars on the road,” she said.
The unemployed Sillah had no driving prior convictions, though he’d previously appeared at the County Court, the court heard.
Sillah was spared conviction given his young age.
He was disqualified from driving for 12 months and put on a 12-month good-behaviour bond including attendance at a road-trauma awareness seminar.
