Pair locked up at Teesside Crown Court for separate crime sprees across Hartlepool on the same night

Nathan Dunn, 21, and Tobie Robson, aged 19, have each been sentenced to time in a young offenders’ institution for a series of offences in Hartlepool all committed in the early hours of October 11 last year.

The most serious was when Dunn and an unknown accomplice crept inside the home of an elderly woman who lives alone at the Fens and stole her Citroen before crashing and writing it off.

The victim was awoken at 3.40am by the sound of creaking floorboards and when she went to investigate found her porch door was open and her car gone.

She reported the burglary to police who saw the car being driven at speed along Catcote Road.

It crashed into a wall when it tried to turn right in Elwick Road. The driver escaped but Dunn, who was in the passenger seat, was arrested after a short chase on foot.

Shaun Dryden, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court, said: “The victim is now scared for her safety. She feels very vulnerable this could happen again.”

Mr Dryden said she has a health issue that meant her car was her “lifeline” for meeting friends and going shopping.

Earlier that night Dunn, of Jones Road, Hartlepool, also tried to burgle another house in the same street when he was caught on a doorbell camera trying the front door.

He also tried the doors of three vehicles at the same house.

He admitted burglary, attempted burglary, theft of the car and three counts of vehicle interference.

Defence barrister Tom Bennett said Dunn, who was addicted to drugs at the time, did not know the person he burgled was vulnerable, adding: “Hearing the difficulties that she’s been left with is something he deeply regrets.”

Sentencing Dunn to 27 months youth detention, Recorder Mark McKone said: “Just imagine the fear caused to an elderly lady having somebody in her house in the middle of the night, but secondly you have reduced the quality of her life in the latter stages of it.”

Robson, of Hamilton Road, Hartlepool, was given 23 months youth detention for two attempted burglaries, two vehicle interferences and stealing a jacket from a vehicle.

They were also committed in the early hours of October 11. At about 4am he tried the front door of a house in Loyalty Close where a mum and her three children were sleeping.

Robson made an untidy search of one vehicle and took a jacket and Halloween mask from a Ford.

And just before 6am he tried to get inside a house and Skoda Octavia in Valley Drive at West Park.

When he was arrested the next day he was abusive to a police officer and was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress, which he admitted.

Martin Scarborough, defending, said Robson, described as immature for his age, was homeless at the time and had taken tablets while on the “spree”.

Locking him up, Recorder McKone told him: “People need to know if they try to break into houses at night the courts will always send people to immediate custody.”