A DRINK-DRIVER crashed a car repeatedly into a York house as the tenant slept inside, a court heard.

Martin Butterworth, prosecuting, said the shock of the collision, in St Hilda's Mews, Tang Hall, was so great that it woke Helen Young as she slept inside, and shook another house three doors away. As residents stared from their bedroom windows, Shane Anthony Garwood, 23, crashed again and again into the house and a lamppost outside it as he tried to manoeuvre his car away.

By the time he had succeeded, he had damaged the house's front porch, front wall and a front window so much that owner Margaret Baggas had to call in a structural engineer to assess the damage. The cost is still not known nearly a month later.

Garwood, of Burlington Avenue, Tang Hall, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and drink-driving on March 14.

York magistrates ordered him to carry out 180 hours' community punishment, fined him £250 with £120 prosecution costs, banned him from driving for 20 months, and ordered him to retake his driving test.

They heard that after the incident, police tracked the car to the junction of Alcuin Avenue and Flaxman Avenue, arrested Garwood nearby and breathalysed him.

Mr Butterworth said Garwood gave a reading of 81 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.

He added that eyewitness Ann Barker heard a loud crash and then a bang. As she looked out of her bedroom window three doors away, she saw Garwood's car reverse six times between the lamp-post and Ms Baggas's house, hitting both repeatedly.

Eventually Garwood managed to reverse without hitting the lamp-post and sped off.

Garwood later told police that he had been drinking in a pub and had had an argument with his partner.

Thinking that she was at home, he went there. But she was not there, and he set off for another house nearby.

As he drove past houses near the back of shops in Tang Hall Lane, he lost control of the car and it hit the house in St Hilda's Mews. He had a clean driving licence.

John Ratcliff, on behalf of Garwood, said that his employers thought so highly of him that early in March they had paid extra to put him on the company insurance so he could drive a company van.

But they took him off again when he told them about the drink-driving.

Updated: 11:18 Thursday, April 10, 2003