A VAN driver with a grudge deliberately crashed his vehicle through a cafe's front window causing more than £38,000 damage.

Stuart Desmond Swales, 32, left his van half in and half out of the cafe with the keys in the ignition.

He took a broom handle and smashed the windows of the cafe's owner's fish restaurant nearby, said Heather Gilmore, prosecuting.

His actions meant the cafe had to close for eight weeks, cost the owner hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost takings and the staff thousands of pounds in lost wages.

He made untrue allegations about the owner to police and said he had drunk vodka and taken cocaine to "give him courage" to smash into the cafe.

Judge Andrew Stubbs QC said Swales had deliberately tried to do as much damage as he could in a revenge attack.

Swales, of Abbots Road, Whitby, was jailed for 19 months, banned from driving for 33 months and ordered to take an extended driving test before driving alone again.

He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, drink driving at more than twice the drink drive limit, and criminal damage.

For him, Graham Parkin said: "His judgement was clouded, his thinking, as demonstrated by his actions, irrational".

He suffered from anxiety and depression.

Swales had not done anything more to the owner or his businesses, and had not threatened him.

Miss Gilmore said Swales carried out the vandalism in the early hours of August 31 last year.

His first target was Cafe Java on Flowergate, Whitby. Then he attacked nearby Angel Fisheries.

He was still on the scene when police arrived at 6.20am and immediately confessed to both vandalisms.