A crowd of protestors has greeted Redland City Mayor, Karen Williams, as she arrived to face a high-range drink driving charge at Cleveland Magistrate’s Court this morning.
The charge follows the Mayor’s alcohol-fuelled car accident in a council-owned vehicle on 23 June.
Ms Williams has publicly admitted to consuming several glasses of wine at a post-Budget celebration on Council premises before getting behind the wheel.
She had earlier taken part in an online call with the grief-stricken families of drink driving victims as part of a push for tougher youth justice laws.
In a filmed address just days before the crash, the Mayor made a passionate appeal for harsher sentencing following the Queensland Attorney-General’s decision to appeal the sentence of the teenage driver responsible for the deaths of local couple (pictured below) Matthew Field, Kate Leadbeater and their unborn son, Miles.
“We do not want any other family to go through what Kate and matt’s parents have been through,” the Mayor stated in her taped address.
She called on the community to stand together on the issue. Today, members of the community did stand together, ironically delivering a similar message for the Mayor.
“That’s why I’m here today. I’m standing up for a lot of residents,” one protestor (pictured below) told local media.
“A lot of residents, not just myself, are angry … everybody I talk to is really angry, had enough, it’s hypocritical and [a case of] double standards.”
A petition calling for the removal of the Mayor has gathered more than 6,600 signatures.
