Racist teenagers broke up a fence and hurled stones at the home of Chinese students, the city's crown court heard.

Youths and girls from west York yelled racial insults in two separate incidents outside a Chapelfields house, said Nigel Wray, prosecuting.

As police made arrests, a 15-year-old schoolgirl hit out at an officer.

It was the second time she had attacked police.

Judge Alan Goldsack, QC, said the teenagers may have been drinking.

One youth aged 17, had been released from a four-month custody sentence for a racist attack on a Turkish worker at his Acomb shop only days before the incident.

He pleaded guilty to affray and received an 180-hour community punishment order, the new name for community service.

The judge said that had he been sentenced at the time of the attack on the Chinese last August, he would have gone back behind bars. But he had turned over a new leaf since.

James Daniel Scott, aged 19, of Thoresby Road, Acomb, and a boy aged 16 at the time of the attack pleaded guilty to a racially-aggravated public order offence and were given 120 hours' community punishment.

Both had breached conditional discharges.

The 15-year-old schoolgirl pleaded guilty to a racially-aggravated public order offence, assaulting police and obstructing police and a schoolgirl now 16 pleaded guilty to a public order offence. Both were given three-month action plans.

None of the under-18 defendants can be named for legal reasons.

Mr Wray said that during the incident last August, the two younger youths broke off pieces of a fence before Scott joined them and the three attacked the Chinese students' house.

After they ran away, at 10.45pm, the two schoolgirls and other girls ignored police warnings about shouting racial insults. The older schoolgirl threw a stone.

Barristers for the five gave details of their work or study commitments.

* The youngest member of the gang, a 15-year-old boy from west York, and Lee Bartlett, 19, of Adelphi House, Windsor Garth, were later conditionally discharged for 18 months for a public order offence later in August involving one of the prosecution witnesses.

The two boys were originally charged with intimidating the witness, which they denied.

Updated: 11:08 Tuesday, April 03, 2001