A DISQUALIFIED teenage driver who led police on an 80mph chase on one of Bradford’s busiest roads has narrowly avoided prison.

Bradford Crown Court heard that Ali Qoranbi drove on the wrong side of the road barely avoiding oncoming cars, jumping a red light, and finally crashing into railings as he tried to make a turn.

Her Honour Judge Sophie McKone described the two-minute pursuit as “an incredibly dangerous piece of driving” and told Qoranbi that it was “a miracle” that other drivers had not collided with him.

But after hearing that he was a registered carer for his disabled mother and a university student who had suffered “extreme trauma” in his life she decided not to jail him.

Prosecutor Daisy Wrigley told the court that police officers in an unmarked car signalled Qoranbi to pull over when he suddenly pulled in front of them, causing them to brake, whilst driving a black Alfa Romeo at 6.42pm on July 1, 2023, on Canal Road.

Instead of stopping Qoranbi accelerated to 60mph in a 40mph zone.

Video footage played in court showed him driving onto the wrong side of Shipley Airedale Road, ignoring a red stop light at a junction, and then increasing his speed even further until he was travelling at 80mph in a 30mph zone in an attempt to evade the police.

He stopped when his car ran into railings as he failed to complete a left turn off the main road. He was arrested at the scene.

The court heard that Qoranbi, who later pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and driving whilst disqualified, was already disqualified from driving at the time of the incident.

Mitigating for Qoranbi, Erin Kitson-Parker said it was a serious offence of prolonged driving lasting just under two minutes, but that the Syrian-born 19-year-old, who came to the UK in 2015 as a refugee following the murder of his father and was 18 at the time of the chase, was “particularly frightened of the police” and had “made a huge, grave mistake”.

She said: “He knows that he should have stopped. He understands that now, but he was scared in respect of violence.”

Judge McKone said the high-speed chase “only ended because you crashed the car".

She said: “It was so dangerous. It could have killed countless people. That was such a busy road. It could have killed you and injured people.

“It was all the worse because you shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car in the first place.”

After a “difficult” decision she decided on balance to suspend a custodial sentence so that the “root cause” of Qoranbi’s offending could be tackled and warned him: “Ultimately I have to think about the public and if you got behind the wheel of a car again you could kill someone.”

She sentenced Qoranbi to 12 months in prison suspended for two years for dangerous driving with two months concurrent for driving whilst disqualified.

She disqualified him from driving for two years and ordered him to take an extended test at the end of that period.

Qoranbi was also ordered to undertake 250 hours of unpaid community work, complete 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days, and complete a 19-day Thinking Skills Programme to address his behaviour.