A criminal who drove at more than 70mph in rush-hour traffic in a stolen car has been jailed for 15 months.

Banned driver Geoffrey Albert Hicks, 30, was escaping from police who had spotted him at the wheel of a £20,000 silver Lexus, said Rob Galley, for the Crown Prosecution Service. “They could not keep up with him. It was 8.25am and the traffic was beginning to build up for the rush hour,” the prosecutor said.

Although police had to give up the chase, an off-duty officer spotted the car abandoned in an alleyway between Kitchener Street and Ashville Street, off Huntington Road.

It had been stolen during a house raid overnight on June 16 and 17, though not by Hicks.

It was the seventh time Hicks had broken a driving ban and he had got a suspended prison sentence five weeks earlier for taking a vehicle without consent, driving while disqualified and stealing from a car.

“You realise you are getting too old for this sort of thing and, quite frankly, it is time you stopped,” Recorder Alan Hedworth QC told Hicks, as he locked him up for 15 months and banned him from driving for three years.

Hicks, 30, of Hope Street, off Walmgate, pleaded guilty to aggravated taking of a vehicle without consent and driving whilst disqualified.

Mr Galley said at York Crown Court that police in Park Grove, The Groves, were on the look-out for the Lexus as he drove down Huntington Road. When he realised they were police officers, he reversed and sped off down alleyways in the neighbourhood at 40mph. Then he turned into Huntington Road, where the speed limit is 30mph.

“The vehicle was doing in excess of 70mph,” said Mr Galley. The chase lasted about five minutes before police lost sight of the Lexus.

After police located the abandoned car, Hicks was posted as wanted and arrested some time later. He left his DNA on a Lucozade bottle by the driver's seat.

For Hicks, Ruth Cranidge said his 12-year-old son had died at the beginning of August and he had tried to take his mind off things by taking amphetamine, cannabis and heroin. But the death had also acted as a “wake-up call” to change his lifestyle, and since being remanded in custody he had started a scaffolding course so he could get work on his release.