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A man from the Ottawa-area has been charged with impaired driving in Quebec after police found the operator of a stolen backhoe asleep at the controls in a roadside ditch.

Police from the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais said the man, whom they found at around 2 a.m. Wednesday in L’Ange-Gardien, east of Gatineau, had more than four times the legal amount of alcohol in his system — 349 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80 mg.

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The man has two recent convictions for impaired driving, police said, and might be facing further legal trouble. Police tracked down the backhoe’s owner and found that the machine was stolen from Ottawa in April.

Raymond Chrétien, 41, of Sarsfield, about 30 kilometres east of Ottawa, is charged with impaired driving and driving while his licence was suspended.

tspears@postmedia.com

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