Dramatic pictures showing a banned teenage driver smashing into two police cars while fleeing from the law were taken only four days after he was freed from a custodial sentence for driving while disqualified.
Umbar Hussain, 19, appeared at Bradford Crown Court yesterday in relation to the crash in Chester Street, near Bradford city centre, in the early hours of January 6.
The court watched CCTV footage taken at 1.15am of Hussain mounting the kerb in an Audi A3, hitting a police car and then colliding with another patrol vehicle blocking his escape.
He fled on foot and was caught soon afterwards hiding in bushes near the Revolution Bar.
Hussain, of Hedgeway, Allerton, Bradford, was held in custody until he appeared at the court.
He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and driving without insurance.
Prosecutor Ewan McLachlan said police officers in a marked patrol car ordered the Audi to stop because it had no registered keeper and there was no record of insurance.
Hussain was on licence after his release four days earlier from an 18-week stretch in a young offender institution imposed by Bradford and Keighley magistrates on November 1 for driving while disqualified.
Mr McLachlan said Hussain was convicted of dangerous driving and driving uninsured in 2010 and sentenced to a youth referral order.
In January last year, he was locked up for eight months for attempted robbery after he tried to car-jack a doctor’s Audi A3 when he stopped outside a newsagent’s in Arnold Place, off Whetley Hill Road in Bradford.
Hussain’s solicitor advocate, Simon Hustler, argued the teenager felt he would benefit from a suspended sentence order, with the threat of custody hanging over him. He had already spent almost two months behind bars, equivalent to a four-month sentence of detention.
Judge Peter Benson said Hussain had been reckless and stupid and showed contempt for traffic regulations.
“You have a dreadful record for driving offences,” he told him.
Hussain was sentenced to eight months detention in a young offender institution, suspended for two years, and banned from driving for two years.
He was ordered to do 180 hours of unpaid work for the community and to attend the probation service’s Responsible Road Users Group.
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