A 28-year-old Suffolk man who refused to take a breath test after a car he was driving crashed into a hedge has been given a suspended prison sentence.

Police officers went to Mutford near Beccles on November 2 at around 9pm and saw Paul Whall getting out of the vehicle and running off.

They chased him across a field and when they caught up with him he complied with a roadside breath test but had then failed to provide further specimens at a police station.

He said: “I’m out of breath. You’ve been chasing me across fields all night.”

Whall of Newsons Avenue, Mutford, admitted failing to provide a specimen and breaching an earlier suspended prison sentence order.

He was given a ten-week prison sentence suspended for 24 months and an 80-day alcohol abstinence requirement.

He was also ordered to do 40 days unpaid work on top of an earlier 150-hour order for the breach of a suspended sentence.

He was banned from driving for 39 months and ordered to pay £320 costs.

Robert Pollington for Whall said his client had stopped drinking since his arrest.

He said a tyre on the vehicle had burst causing it to end up in the hedge.