SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A woman who drank all night in Yellowknife and then got behind the wheel of someone else's vehicle and crashed it into three other vehicles received a $1,500 fine, one day in prison and was ordered to pay for the damages she caused.

The 22-year-old Yellowknife woman pleaded guilty Nov. 27 to impaired driving and failing to remain at the scene. She will have to pay for the more than $13,000 worth of damage she caused to three other vehicles and will be banned from driving for three years.

"She took a lethal weapon and put it into action. People could have been killed," said Crown prosecutor Janice Walsh.

The prosecutor said the woman drank for almost 10 hours on Sept. 12, after going to a bar and continuing to drink at a house party, where she passed out briefly. She used someone else's SUV to drive home in the morning and proceeded to drive into two other vehicles parked in a driveway across from the house she was leaving and then hit a third vehicle close to her home.

Walsh said the woman hadn't driven a vehicle with a standard transmission before and after driving across town at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning, She abandoned the vehicle after the third crash and ran away.

There were no damages filed in relation to the SUV she drove from the party. The Crown didn't know how she obtained the vehicle.

"She was clearly staggering and intoxicated," said Walsh. "In her drunken stupor she caused substantial damage to the vehicles and she fled the scene."

The woman did not have a driver's licence at the time.

At 4 p.m. that same day, Walsh said the driver turned herself into police, who had spent several hours searching for her.

Defence lawyer Serge Petitpas said his client, who has a three-year-old daughter and no previous criminal record, was remorseful for her actions.

Deputy judge Michel Bourassa called the woman a "drunkard and a skunk" and asked how she would feel if her own child was killed by a drunk driver.

"You've hurt people financially and you're going to be responsible," he said. "You're up to your neck. I hope it makes you think twice about drinking."