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Leeds career criminal in high speed crash
A career criminal who has committed 150 offences and has received convictions every year since he was 10, was almost killed in a high-speed stolen car crash.
Leeds Crown Court heard how 30-year-old Steven Moss created mayhem speeding along a narrow residential street in Leeds.
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The vehicle flew through the air as Moss lost control and landed on a parked transit van and another car.
Moss spent a month in hospital after being freed from the wreckage of a stolen Mazda in High Ash Avenue, Wigton Moor.
Moss – who has convictions for 150 offences – was jailed for five years yesterday after a judge said he had failed to learn from his near-death experience.
While on bail for the offence he committed another burglary and stole a car.
Leeds Crown Court was told how Moss had received convictions every year since his first offence as a ten-year-old in 1990.
Carmel Pearson, prosecuting, said Moss drove at high speed over the brow of a hill in High Ash Avenue without regard for what was on the other side before it crashed.
Moss was wedged in the wreckage while his passenger ran off. No one else was injured in the incident in May last year.
Accident investigators said tyre marks at the scene were similar to
those found on a motorway, not a residential street.
Police interviewed Moss a month later but he had little recollection of
the crash. He told officers he knew the car was stolen.
While on bail awaiting sentence he then carried a night-time burglary in Gildersome in which a Ford Fiesta and valuables from the home of an elderly couple was stolen while they were in bed.
Police stopped the car a short time later and used CS gas to detain Moss after he put up a struggle.
The court was told how he has a long criminal history of 29 convictions
for 150 offences.
They include prison sentences for robbery, burglary, aggravated vehicle taking, theft and handling stolen goods.
Moss, of Valley Road, Cleckheaton, admitted handling stolen goods, dangerous driving, burglary and driving while disqualified.
Philip Morris, for Moss, said the vast majority of his offending occurred when he was a juvenile.
He said: "The rate of his offending when one looks at his record reveals offence after offence after offence on each of every year since 1990 up until 2003 when he received four years imprisonment."
Mr Morris said his offending in recent years had been "dramatically reduced" and he had expressed a desire to "change his spots."
Referring to the crash, the barrister said: "Not a day goes by when he doesn't express a degree of gratitude that he's still here.
"He remains focused on attempting to ensure that, upon completion of this sentence, his offending history will cease."
Jailing him, judge Kerry Macgill said: "You are a career criminal, of that there is no doubt."
He added: "Sometimes young men grow out of their criminality. But here you are at the age of 30 in the throes of committing offences of the most serious type."
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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