AN ‘institutionalised’ teenager who led police on a 70mph chase in residential streets while driving a stolen car has been jailed.

Burnley Crown Court heard that just six days after appearing before Blackburn magistrates in relation to that offence Tyler Jerome Branche, 19, of Royds Street, Accrington, was caught by police driving a second stolen vehicle.

Prosecutor Kate Hammond said the first incident happened at 1.50am on August 2 when police noticed a Ford Fiesta speeding along Burnley Road, Padiham.

That vehicle had been stolen from a house in Burnley on July 24.

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Ms Hammond said that during the four-minute police chase Banche drove at speeds of up to 73mph on Green Lane, Cemetery Road, St John’s Road Manchester Road and Kirkside View.

Dash cam footage from a police car, which was played in court, showed Branche’s vehicle being driven on the wrong sie of the road on blind bends and at one point it went through a red light.

Ms Hammond said at one point the vehicle ‘took off’ while going over a humpback bridge and it ‘straddled the while line in the middle of the road virtually throughout’.

When the car did eventually come to a stop, Branche ran from his vehicle but was caught by police. A passenger in the car also ran from police but they have never been caught.

He was subsequently charged with dangerous driving, driving without insurance and driving without a licence.

Branche pleaded guilty to all those offences when he appeared before magistrates and the case was sent to Burnley Crown Court for sentencing. He was released on bail and given an interim disqualification.

But at 5.45pm on August 9 he was seen driving a stolen Renault Twingo taken in a burglary in Barnfield Street, Accrington, overnight on August 6..

Ms Hammond said officers spotted Branche in the car in Exchange Street and although the vehicle did set off at speed and turn on to Dover Street it stopped a short distance later.

Branche tried to run away from officers again but was caught and arrested.

The court heard Brance, who has 13 convictions for 30 offences, committed the offences while out on licence from prison and while under the terms of a community order.

Defending, Clare Thomas said her client had had a difficult childhood and had got in with a bad crowd.

Ms Thomas said: “He is a young man who has been in the care system since the age of 10. It appears he has become somewhat institutionalised. He’s now back in custody and he does make the point there is some routine, there is some stability and there are meals given to him. But he is finding prison an extraordinarily difficult experience.”

Branche pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, driving without a licence, two counts of driving without insurance and handling stolen goods.

Sentencing Branche to 16 months in a young offender’s institution, Judge Phillip Parry told the defendant in the weeks after he was last released from prison he had ‘stuck two fingers up at the system’ and turned his back on the care workers who had tried to help him.

He was also banned from driving for two years and eight months and ordered to take an extended re-test.