Serial car-snatcher Gareth Gowlett was today starting a two-year jail term after he drove at police, dodged road blocks and put lives at risk on a high-speed chase through streets packed with football fans.

It was the second time a judge had given the teenage terror the maximum possible sentence in an effort to end the car crime career he began at 14.

York Crown Court heard Gowlett, now 19, repeatedly mounted the pavement to avoid police blocks and drove on the wrong side of the road as he fled officers at speed through the Clifton area of York.

At one point policemen had to leap out of the way as he drove round a police van parked to block him in Wilberforce Avenue.

He was on parole after his release from a five-month sentence less than a month earlier for another car-snatch, banned from driving and on bail for stealing nearly £1,000 worth of clothes hours earlier.

The court heard that it was a "miracle" he did not injure anyone on the careering drive through streets filled with York City football fans heading for Bootham Crescent.

"It really was an awful offence," said Recorder Henry Prosser.

"When the maximum sentence for dangerous driving is as low as two years, that has to be the starting point - and you are entitled to some credit for pleading guilty."

He jailed him for 20 months for the dangerous driving and added four months for the theft.

Gowlett, of St Philips Grove, Clifton, pleaded guilty to aggravated taking a car without consent, driving while disqualified and without insurance, dangerous driving, and stealing £990 worth of clothes from Principles, York.

In June 1998, he was jailed for 18 months, then the maximum sentence he could get because he was 17, after pleading guilty to a series of mostly motoring offences, including ramming a police car.

Simon Kealey, prosecuting, said store detectives kept watch on clothing found bundled up under the shop display on August 6.

They spotted Gowlett and another man take the clothes and try to make off with them on bicycles, but Gowlett was arrested.

He was released on bail, but a man and woman saw him in an Astra, taken without consent, later that night.

The following afternoon, the woman spotted him again in the car and alerted police, who began pursuing him.

Two road blocks failed to stop him, but Gowlett eventually fled from the car and was arrested.

For him, Robert Collins said he was beginning to realise that he posed a "danger to the public".

He had had a difficult upbringing because he came from a single parent family, but was a "model" prisoner when inside.

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