A burglar who confronted a woman as he raided her home before repeatedly ramming a police vehicle as he tried to escape has been jailed.
Carlisle Crown Court heard how a widowed grandmother realised there was someone inside her rural address north of Millom during the early hours of September 10 last year.
She saw a man in a dark hoody who fled with a partner in crime in a car. She then realised her handbag and a purse containing cash and a photo of her husband with her grandchildren had been stolen.
She later described being disgusted by the pair’s crime, and had collapsed in the aftermath, such was her distress, resulting in an ambulance being called.
Heavily-convicted Carlisle-based crook Patrick Young, 37, was one of the burglars.
After leaving the burgled home, Young was spotted behind the wheel of a Ford Mondeo with false plates.
He refused to stop for police, accelerated away and on a number of roads between Wath Brow and Whitehaven he travelled at high speed and performed dangerous manoeuvres.
Prosecutor Gabrielle Harrison told how the Mondeo did eventually come to a stop. “The reverse lights were activated. It reversed repeatedly into the police vehicle, no less than 11 times,” said Ms Harrison.
After the Mondeo was permanently halted, Young and his accomplice fled the vehicle. Young was found cowering in undergrowth. The other burglar was never traced.
When brought to court Young, of Firlands, Stanwix, Carlisle, admitted burglary and was convicted of dangerous driving, a trial judge observing that the defendant had told jurors a tissue of lies.
At Young’s sentencing hearing today, the prosecutor said he had 105 previous offences on his record.
In 2022 he was locked up for burgling rural properties and farms, and for stealing a £35,000 motorhome which was used to ram a police vehicle during a pursuit.
Defence lawyer Eve Salter, mitigating, said Young had remained out of trouble for a spell, before returning to crime.
“He accepts by the commission of these offences he has completely let himself and his family down,” said Ms Salter.
Young was given a 36-month prison sentence, and must serve a four-year driving ban when released from custody.
“Thrill-seeker you may be — you know this kind of offending is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be imposed,” said the sentencing judge, Recorder Julian Shaw.
