Manchester - Anti-drink driving campaigners reacted with horror last night after it emerged that a mother was more than twice over the legal alcohol limit as she drove a car packed with 13 young children.
Ms Amanda Ryan-McCurdy (24), who claimed she had been drinking at a party the previous evening, was stopped by police who spotted the passengers crammed in to the back of her family Ford Escort on the way back from a football match.
The youngsters, three of whom were her own children, were aged between six months and four years old, a court heard.
Prosecutor Jill Yates told Manchester magistrates last Friday that Ryan-McCurdy, of Salford, Greater Manchester, had failed a breath test. She admitted driving with excess alcohol and being overloaded and was bailed until September 12th for presentence reports and given an interim driving ban.
Her solicitor, Mr Jeremy Spencer, said she was taking the toddlers home after their parents had failed to pick them up from a football match. The mother claimed that there had only been seven children in the car at the time of her arrest. - (PA)