A CARLISLE teenager used a Transit van to twice ram a police vehicle during a high speed chase which ended with him smashing into a pregnant woman’s car.

Provisional licence holder Tylor Alan Lockhart, 19, came to the attention of a constable on mobile patrol just after 12pm on January 24.

Lockhart was followed on to Pennine Way but thereafter ignored blue lights and sirens.

Lockhart’s van mounted a pavement alongside Pennine Way School while pedestrians were in the area. He then drove through a play park on to Hunters Crescent, causing another motorist to take evasive action, and hit more than twice the speed limit on Cumwhinton Road.

After skidding at a junction, he skidded briefly before leaving the city, entering 30mph Cumwhinton at 60mph.

“He repeated his technique used at the beginning of the pursuit,” prosecutor Brendan Burke told Carlisle Crown Court, “stopping, reversing and ramming the police vehicle, again causing damage.”

Lockhart sped past a female horse rider — causing her alarm — before motoring through Scotby and heading through a red light at road works.

“The predictable happened and he drove into head-on collision with another vehicle driven by a woman who was 25 weeks’ pregnant,” said Mr Burke.

“Her injury is described as minor. Her car was written off, the airbags deployed and immediately her concern would be the obvious — that she was 25 weeks’ pregnant; she was anxious, distressed and upset about the fate of the unborn child.”

Lockhart, of Beverley Rise, Carlisle, later admitted dangerous driving, no insurance and having no full licence.

His lawyer, Jeff Smith, conceded his driving was 'appalling' and caused by his fear of returning to custody, where he had endured a difficult time and been repeatedly attacked in the wake of previous sexual offending.

He also suffered from poor mental health.

Recorder Philip Grundy jailed Lockhart for 10 months. He must serve a three-year driving ban when released and pass an extended re-test.

“You were calculating in the way you were driving to try and escape,” the judge told him. “It is pure luck that no one has been seriously injured or killed.

“It is about as serious a piece of dangerous driving as one could imagine without it being reckless, or causing serious injury or death.”