Inverness police follow-up on tip about suspicious activity leading to drug-driving conviction
Police received a report of a car being left in the Culloden housing estate in August 2023 and then were alerted by the same caller that it had been moved on March 7 the following year.
Inverness Sheriff Court was told that officers were tasked to track down the vehicle and when they found 40-year-old Katie Outen, of Oldtown Road, Inverness, she was tested for drugs.
Outen was positive for cannabis and a later analysis showed she was more than two-and-a-half times the legal driving limit of 2mcgs of the drug in her system. Her reading was 5.4mcgs and she admitted drug-driving.
Fiscal depute Grant McLennan asked Sheriff Eilidh Macdonald to make Outen forfeit the £5000 car as she had a previous similar conviction. But this was refused by the court after defence solicitor Samantha Morrison told the sheriff that there was outstanding finance on the vehicle which was in her client's mother's name.
She added: "She has since stopped smoking cannabis."
Outen was fined £580 and banned from driving for three years.
