A DEFENDANT sparked a full-scale alert at York Crown Court when he leapt from the dock.

Court staff pressed their panic button and the usher sprinted out of the courtroom to alert security staff to keep the courthouse front door closed.

As the alarm sounded throughout the building, extra dock officers raced along the underground corridor from the court cells and up the steps into the dock and a security officer blocked the entrance to Courtroom Two's public gallery ready to catch the defendant if he made for the front door.

Haralambie-Rudin Chitoran, 31, had just been sent to jail for 16 months in Courtroom Two for dangerous driving.

But instead of going down the court dock steps with the dock staff, he leapt out of the dock into the public gallery where a woman believed to be his girlfriend was sitting.

Four dock staff surrounded him and took him back into the dock. From there they escorted him down the dock steps into the cell area. He was later taken by a prison van to Hull Prison to start his prison sentence.

Chitoran, of Highfield Road, Wheatley, Doncaster, was before the court to be sentenced for an manoeuvre on the A19 at Chapel Haddlesley. According to dashcam footage before the court, he passed an oncoming vehicle on the single carriageway road, while his vehicle was on the oncoming vehicle's left.

He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and in addition to the prison sentence was banned from driving for three years and eight months and ordered to take an extended test before driving alone again.