Speeding teenager in Birmingham New Road terror gets 10 months detention

Nathan Cook also sped past a children's play area and went through two red traffic lights during the 10-minute pursuit on August 21, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Police ordered the 18-year-old to stop after discovering the Peugeot 106 he was driving along Ring Road St Georges in Wolverhampton city centre was not insured.

Mr Howard Searle, prosecuting at Wolverhampton Crown Court, continued: "The officers were in a marked police car and wanted to speak to him but he accelerated towards the Parkfields area, overtaking vehicles on the nearside."

Cook ignored a red traffic light to turn into Cartwright Street before heading off on a loop through narrow residential streets which brought him back onto Ring Road St Georges where he drove through a second red light.

His distressed woman passenger was frantically trying to get the teenager to slow down as he headed onto Birmingham New Road, said Mr Searle.

At one stage the defendant drove onto the wrong side of the dual carriageway to overtake congested traffic, forcing alarmed motorists to brake and swerve out of the way.

Then Cook turned into the dead end Interclyde Drive in Parkfields where he leapt from the still moving Peugeot and ran away after scaling a six feet high fence. Meanwhile the abandoned car – with the passenger still on board – dropped down a five foot embankment into a metal fence causing £700 damage.

The woman was helped from the car by police and informed them: "I told him to stop but he wouldn't." Cook later gave himself up after receiving a call on his mobile from the officers.

Mr Stephen Hamblett, defending, conceded: "The consequences of his decision to drive on the wrong side of the Birmingham New Road could have been a lot worse."

But he said the teenager had been in local authority care since the age of 12, had threatened to self harm and 'was a young man who could benefit from the input of probation rather than the punishment of immediate custody'.

Cook from Lawley Street, Dudley pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and having neither insurance nor a licence, and was given ten months detention in a Young Offenders Institution by Judge Barry Berlin who told him: "It is extremely difficult to speed down the Birmingham New Road during the rush hour but you did it. It was completely irrelevant to you that other road users could have been killed by your actions."