A NORTH Yorkshire electrician who flouted the law repeatedly by driving while disqualified has been jailed for 24 weeks.

Karl Stephen Reid, 29, bought a car shortly after he was released from an earlier prison sentence in October for trying to steal £13,860 from a 74-year-old Selby area man in a cheque fraud. He has previous convictions for driving whilst disqualified.

York magistrates heard that he drove his vehicle repeatedly despite being banned from the road for 12 months for earlier motoriing offences.

But on Boxing Day, he drove off with the house keys, leaving his partner stranded, and she called police, who stopped him at the wheel.

“I will do anything not to go to prison,” he told magistrates after his arrest. “It was due to financial and peer pressure. Since coming out of prison, I have just wanted to give my family a good Christmas. That’s the only reason I was driving.”

He pleaded with the magistrates to adjourn his case for a pre-sentence report, but magistrates decided his offences were so serious, he had to go straight back to jail.

They jailed him for six weeks on each offence consecutively and banned him from driving for another 12 months.

Reid, of Rudding Lane, Follifoot, near Harrogate, pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified twice on December 26 and twice on December 24 and will now spend his 30th birthday next week behind bars.

In July, York Crown Court heard how he stole blank cheques from a pensioner’s chequebook while doing rewiring work at the 74-year-old man’s home in Drax. Then he wrote them out to himself to a total value of nearly £16,000.

The bank would not cash one written out to £13,860, but accepted another which enabled him to withdraw £2,000 from the pensioner’s account without his knowledge.

The court heard he had been paid for the rewiring work. He claimed he had been underpaid and was jailed for 12 months.