Dramatic car crash ends police chase after road 'menace'

A motorist who led police on a 70mph police chase was branded a 'menace on the roads' as he was jailed for two years.
Peter Hadfield, 29, tried to flee pursuing officers in two high-speed rush-hour chases in two months, putting his criminal record into triple figures.
In the first chase he tore a Renault Clio around the streets of Hartlepool before reversing into a police car shortly after 9am on January 31.
He appeared to pull over before seeming to have second thoughts and speeding off, but his first attempt to get away took him straight into a traffic jam.
He almost rolled the car when he passed in front of oncoming traffic.
At one point, officers drove at 70mph to keep up with the 29-year-old as he drove through 30mph residential streets.
Hadfield backed the car into the police vehicle, shattering both cars' windscreens, just after 9am on January 31.
'There ensued a police chase through very narrow streets, cars parked on either side,' said Judge Sean Morris, passing sentence.
'It was a Tuesday morning, a school day. Children could have been about. There were pedestrians about.
'You rammed the police car twice, reversing at speed into it at such force that the windscreen of your car shattered, sending the parcel shelf hurtling out of the car.'
The video showed him racing away on roads including Cornwall Street, Devon Street, Oxford Road, Stockton Road, Spring Garden Road and Westbrooke Avenue.
Officers rushed to arrest him from the wrecked Renault after he rammed them on Kingsley Avenue.
The Crown applied to have him remanded in custody, but magistrates granted him bail, said prosecutor Rachel Masters.
The judge told Hadfield: 'You were bailed by magistrates, despite the CPS requesting to have you remanded in custody quite rightly.'
Freedom allowed Hadfield to commit the same crimes again.
The banned and uninsured driver was pursued again in a Mercedes on the A19, A689, A1185, Marsh House Avenue and Low Grange Avenue, Billingham at 5.30pm on March 2.
He nearly hit another vehicle as he performed a U-turn on a dual carriageway in the 70mph chase.
'You must have come within a cat's whisker of smashing into a car coming the opposite way when you tried to turn across the carriageway,' added Judge Morris.
'It could have been a high-speed collision which undoubtedly would have resulted in considerable injury, if not death.'
Hadfield finally ploughed into two garden walls, with a female passenger in the car. He was followed and detained by two members of the public until police arrived.
Hadfield, of Hartlepool, admitted two charges of dangerous driving and two of driving while disqualified.
He appeared via video link to Holme House Prison for sentence.
He had 97 previous offences on his record including vehicle taking.
He was jailed for nine months and banned from driving for more than two years in January last year, again for dangerous driving.
In that episode, he rammed a police vehicle and knocked over a concrete bollard in Hartlepool.
Martin Scarborough, defending, said prison was inevitable and asked the judge to keep the sentence as short as possible.
Judge Morris told Hadfield: 'You didn't learn from your experience in prison.
'You are a menace which it comes to vehicles and it's quite clear that you have absolutely no regard to other people and their safety.'
Hadfield was jailed for two years and banned from driving for five years and 10 months.