Drink-driver who sped off from police and ran three red lights jailed

And locking up the “thoroughly decent” man with no previous convictions, Judge Sean Morris warned people who try to drive away from police: "When the blue lights go on, if the foot goes down, you go down."

Brett Craven, 25, had a partially empty bottle of wine in the footwell of his Vauxhall Astra and jumped a red light in front of officers as he pulled out of Foss Islands Road Retail Park, York, just after midnight on November 3, said James Gelsthorpe, prosecuting.

Police ordered him to stop, but he made off at 55mph in a 30mph zone, jumping through two more red lights before stopping in a cul-de-sac off Hull Road and hiding behind a bush.

He was two and a half times the drink drive limit.

“When you get to prison, let everyone know, people who create police chases will go to prison,” the judge told him at York Crown Court.

“You put police officers’ lives at risk as well as the lives of members of the public (who are) driving through green lights.

“You could have hurtled into the side of someone. It is life threatening behaviour.

“Young men in cars need to know this will happen: when the blue lights go on, if the foot goes down, you go down.

“I bear in mind you are ordinarily a thoroughly decent young man and because of that I am reducing the sentence.”

As his mother and sister watched, Craven, of Lucas Avenue, Clifton, was jailed for eight months, banned from driving for 16 months and ordered to take an extended driving test.

He admitted dangerous driving and drink driving in May. The case was adjourned so he could have surgery for a kidney problem.

For Craven, Andrew Semple said he had sped off “in a moment of madness”.

He had not intended to drive home after a meal out with his girlfriend, but they had argued, so he had decided to drive the two-mile journey home.

He had lost his job over the incident, but had found another one. He had also given up drinking because of his kidney problem.