Teenagers who led police on 95mph chase handed community orders

Morgan Kershaw and Dylan Cook, who were 19 and 18 respectively at the time, were in the car with two youths when police tried to pull them over on the evening of March 11.

The Fiesta was displaying false number plates and led the officers on a seven-minute chase through Cleckheaton and Brighouse.

They ran red lights travelling at three times the speed limit in some areas, doing 60 in 30mph zones in Brighouse, travelling at 70mph through some 20mph zones and topping 95mph on the M606 at Chain Bar.

They eventually lost control of the vehicle after it hit a kerb which caused damage and forced them to stop.

Neither the two defendants nor the two youths were in the driving seat when the police reached them and extensive forensic analysis could not determine who was behind the wheel, Vincent Blake-Barnard told Leeds Crown Court.

The car had been stolen the day before the chase.

The defendants denied aggravated vehicle taking and were set to stand trial next year, but changed their pleas to guilty at the start of July.

Now 20, Kershaw, of St Hilda’s Place, Cross Green has two previous convictions for theft of vehicle and a robbery as a youth.

Cook, now 19, of Brigshaw Drive, Allerton Bywater, has a caution for taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent.

No mitigation was offered for either after the judge, Recorder Anthony Hawks, said he would follow the recommendation of the probation reports and give them a 12-month community order with rehabilitation requirement days.

He also banned them both from driving for a year.

He said: “We will never find out who was driving, someone was. You were all in it together.

"Kershaw, you are beginning to build up something of a criminal record.

"You need to be careful, you you will get custody soon if you do not stop this.”

The two youths were given referral orders – a community sentence for under 18s – during a previous hearing.