Police / Lawyer Legal advice urgently needed please 🙏🏽

[Newfor2021]

Hello,
I’d greatly appreciate any advice from someone with a professional background who might be able to offer any advice in these circumstances please?

My son was caught driving his car as a learner driver without a responsible driver / supervisor.

As he’s 17 they de-arrested him at the scene, brought him home, told me (I’d been asleep) and have now fixed an interview date for Wednesday.

My question is there are some mitigating circumstances which will support his reasons as to why he was driving.
Should he just verbalise them in the interview or should he prepare a written statement beforehand? He could also ask some of the people involved to write supporting testimonies - again should he just say these people are prepared to do this or should we gather these before Wednesday?

Thank you in advance for any professional guidance.

A few questions I suspect I will get asked:

He’s planning to plead guilty and at the time apologised profusely and immediately stated why he was going and where he was driving to.

I was going to use the duty solicitor - however I have been advised to ignore their advice to go ‘No comment’ as this will only annoy the police and stop them having the ability to go more lenient on him.

I am in no way supporting or condoning his behaviour!
I am of course dealing with the consequences of his actions - however my child is in his first ever legal trouble and as his mum I will do everything in my power to help and support him from obtaining a criminal record at 17 - as believe it or not he wants to join the police force and this would of course stop him!

The policeman showed photos of the car, and when he said it was a church wall my son extra apologised for that too and said he hadn’t meant to damage the church or anything.

It does sound from this like he actually crashed! That's quite a drip feed. Christ....he's really bloody lucky that he didn't hit an actual person.

OP - I understand that you're relieved he's not facing serious consequences, but I hope to god you aren't minimising this and defending it to this extent when you speak to your son about it. You'll be doing him no favours if you are.

All that twaddle upthread about what a safe driver he was, just hadn't quite ticked the box of passing his test.... and he'd actually crashed during his illegal drive!

... apparently he was stopped for no reason. Not just the OP, but a slew of subsequent posters insisted this must be the case. Although for some reason, I wasn't convinced.

Tbf, it's plausible that a teen out driving alone during Covid restrictions could be stopped.

But now it's pretty obvious what happened.

It reminds me of the Supergrass lyrics now:

Got some cash, bought some wheels
Took it out 'cross the fields
Lost control, hit a wall
But we're alright

Yes, he's alright. And so is everyone else. But he's been fucking lucky.

I've got a Roxette earworm myself.

it’s all there in the thread

No, the wall has only just appeared.

They do that walls though, there you are driving along like a veteran at 1.00 in the morning then EEEEK, there’s a wall. Phew, never saw it coming.

And by the way, when you stop a car I think you’ll find the convention is handbrake first, then neutral.

It all sounds very cosy and jolly .

I said that he could have been stopped because it may not have been an essential journey because of Covid and the church wall hadn't been mentioned then or obviously that would have been the reason for being stopped

So what actually happened to the wall? Churches aren't like speed bumps - you can generally see them coming from quite a distance.

The plot thickens .......

@ProfessorSlocombe

... apparently he was stopped for no reason. Not just the OP, but a slew of subsequent posters insisted this must be the case. Although for some reason, I wasn't convinced.

I don't think people insisted it was the case but that it could be the case as some people, me included, have had that happen. So often on here life is black and white when there are all sorts of greys in the middle.

You kept quiet about him hitting a wall OP!

The amount of posters and threads on here that mention police stopping people because ofCovid, I thought that it was highly feasible for that to happen at 1am