A BLACKBURN drug abuser armed with a screwdriver jumped into a woman’s car and tried to rob the vehicle at a petrol station.

Michael Scanlan, 57, urged the terrified Katrina Murphy, who had just paid for fuel, to ‘drive, drive’ while grabbing her jacket, Burnley Crown Court heard.

But she managed to struggle free and alert staff in the kiosk at the Tesco filling station, the court was told.

CCTV was captured of the incident and Scanlan, of Great Bolton Street, Blackburn, who had ran off, was arrested.

Before his detention he had also snatched a handbag from another woman’s car, in a confrontation at Blackburn’s Townsmoor retail park, the court heard.

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Judge Jonathan Gibson was told the defendant had once been part of an armed robbery gang in the Merseyside area and had been jailed for 13 years for a conspiracy offence at Liverpool Crown Court in September 2001.

Scanlan was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison by Judge Gibson, after being labelled a ‘dangerous offender’.

He pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and theft of the handbag.

Jailing him and commenting on the robbery bid, Judge Gibson said: “You clearly had crime in mind and had with you a screwdriver, even though Miss Murphy thought it was a knife.”

Jeremy Grout-Smith, prosecuting, said in the petrol station incident, on February 10 last year, Miss Murphy had seen a man, who turned out to be Scanlon, loitering around the scene but thought he had walked off to the main superstore nearby.

She told police, after Scanlan’s arrest: “I am a good-natured person who was just going about my business.”

The victim was now reluctant to visit Burnley town centre alone and only used petrol stations where she could pay at the pump and remain in her car with the doors locked, the court heard.

Mr Grout-Smith said in the second incident, two days later, Samina Farid had been visiting shops at the Townsmoor retail park in Blackburn before returning to her vehicle.

She placed her handbag on the passenger seat and a man opened the door and made a grab for it.

Mrs Farid tried to pull the bag back but the handle snapped, the court heard.

While the man ran off, she managed to alert a passerby, who initially chased after him. But Scanlan was able to escape and was not arrested until later.

Probation officer Lesley Flynn told the court that Scanlan, last released from another jail term in 2015, had smoked illegal highs while in prison and had continuing drugs issues after his time in custody.

She said he had appeared to have little insight into the effect his crimes had on victims and remained at a ‘high risk’ of serious offending when eventually allowed back into the community.

Philip Holden, defending, said the only real mitigating factor in his client’s case was his guilty plea.

His previous offending had been of a much more violent nature, and carried out with others, and it was clear he had acted alone in the current set of offences, he told the court.

The court was told Scanlan, as part of his robbery conspiracy sentence from 2001, was subject to the provisions of a life licence, and had been recalled to custody following his most recent arrest.

This period of detention was not due to expire, in any event, until November 2017.