AN “arrogant” driver was looking for his partner when he twice overtook queues of cars waiting at red lights, York Crown Court heard.

Jordan Edward Dougherty, 28, was driving with cocaine in his body during the dangerous journey from Bishopthorpe Road through Acomb to Holgate on May 25, said Kelly Sheriff, prosecuting.

A motorist raised the alarm after they had to swerve out of the way to avoid him in Hamilton Drive East.

After police pulled Doughterty over between the Iron Bridge, Holgate, and the city centre, he told them: “ I buy motors and cars for a living. I went to Acomb to pick up a car and on my way back I get done for dangerous driving. It wasn’t me.”

His solicitor advocate Neal Kutte told the court Dougherty’s partner suffered from mental health issues and depression, and had walked out of their home in her nightwear saying she would kill herself.

“That is why the defendant got into the car. That is why he was driving around, to try and find her,” said Mr Kutte. The partner wrote a letter to the court supporting the solicitor advocate’s words.

Dougherty, of Edgeware Road, off Fulford Road, York, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and drug driving.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said of Dougherty’s driving: “It was arrogant, it was rude.”

He watched CCTV of the driving that included video taken at the southern end of Bishy Road shops and at the junction of Poppleton Road and Acomb Road outside the Fox Inn.

The judge suspended a six-month prison sentence for two years on condition Dougherty does an electronically monitored four-month curfew that confines him within his house every night from 6pm to 3am.

“You can watch the summer night every day from inside your own house where you will be imprisoned with a tag,” he told Dougherty. He refused a request from Mr Kutte for the curfew area to include the house’s garden so Dougherty could go outside to smoke.

“It’s an opportunity for him to give up smoking,” he said.

The judge also banned Dougherty from driving for 18 months and ordered him to take an extended driving test before driving unsupervised again.