JAILED: Driver who led police on 100mph chase which ended in field of alpacas

Hussain Khalil crashed the stolen BMW into a field near Cannock, scattering the alpacas.

He drove through two more fences and then lay low in woods as he tried to avoid capture, Stafford Crown Court heard. None of the animals were inured.

A police helicopter was called in and Khalil was eventually found, Mr Bernard Linnemann, prosecuting, said.

Khalil, aged 26, admitted charges of dangerous driving and criminal damage on Monday. He was jailed for 18 months and banned from driving for three years.

Recorder Mr Stephen Thomas told him: "You went to Stafford for a night out. However, once there you met someone in the course of the evening. You chose to drive a BMW vehicle which either you knew or strongly suspected was stolen.

"Only an immediate custodial sentence can be justified. This was a course of driving by you over a distance of 10 miles, during all or most of that time you were being pursued by police cars. When capture was inevitable, you left the road, driving through fields, through fences, putting livestock in danger, then hiding seeking to evade capture."

The judge heard that the BMW, stolen in Stoke a couple of days earlier, had false number plates and was one of two stolen cars being pursued by the police on July 4 last year.

Mr Linnemann said the chase started on the M6, then switched to the A449 through Penkridge at speeds in excess of 100mph through a 30mph zone.

Khalil, of Marroway Street, Birmingham, twice evaded police stingers laid out on the road, driving at a police officer and then up an embankment. On the A5 heading to Cannock, Khalil drove on the wrong side of the road at 110mph, then went the wrong way at a roundabout on the A460.

Turning in to Saredon Road, a narrow country lane, the defendant switched off the car's lights and stopped on a bridge in an attempt to reverse-ram the police car.

The pursuit ended when the BMW pulled in to Manor Drive, a dead end, and smashed through a farm gate into the field of alpacas.

Khalil denied being the driver of the car, but changed his pleas on the day of his trial. Mr Yasser Gulraiz, defending, said Khalil had been to Stafford for a night out in his own properly insured car. He added there was no evidence that he had been involved in the theft of the BMW.