Banned North Vancouver driver nabbed again after driving less than 500 metres

A North Vancouver man who took a chance and drove a work truck less than 500 metres while banned from being behind the wheel is facing an additional one-year driving prohibition along with immigration consequences.

Roberto Palacios Barba, 29, had retrieved a truck dropped off in a Denny’s restaurant parking lot by an employee of his cleaning business and was in the process of driving it less than a kilometre home when he was nabbed by a North Vancouver RCMP officer on patrol in the 2000 block of Marine Drive, said Crown counsel Kevin Masse.

Palacios Barba admitted to the officer that he was prohibited from driving and spent the night in jail before being released. Since then, he’s had to answer to immigration officials and is getting ready to temporarily leave the country and return to his home country of Mexico, his defence lawyer Ali Yusuf told the judge.

“He's made some stupid choices. He’s quite aware of that. He's willing to take the consequences,” said his lawyer.

Judge Robert Hamilton handed Palacios Barba a $500 fine in addition to the one-year driving ban in North Vancouver provincial court April 28.

Palacios Barba had a 16-month driving prohibition imposed by a judge in March of 2021 and was 13 months into that when he got behind the wheel.

Palacios Barba was handed the original driving ban after pleading guilty to a hit-and-run on Dec. 14, 2018.

In that case, Palacios Barba admitted to fleeing the scene of an accident after hitting a 24-year-old woman with his truck in a marked crosswalk on Lonsdale Avenue at Fifth Street. The woman was thrown more than 10 metres and was rushed to Lions Gate Hospital with injuries including a broken arm, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and internal injuries to her kidney and liver.

Later that night, Palacios Barba turned himself in to police, saying he’d been playing peekaboo with his young son, who was in the truck with him, and got distracted.

After he hit the woman, he panicked, Palacios Barba’s lawyer told the court.

He also acknowledged to being a Mexican citizen and having overstayed his visa in Canada. He also had no valid driver's licence at the time of the accident.