Jailed driver told ‘somebody could have been killed’

A crazed motorist tried to give police the slip during a death-defying car chase in which he drove on the pavement, ran red lights and sped down the wrong side of the road in residential areas.

Steven Cyrus, 25, shot straight over a junction in his Vauxhall Astra van and tried a hand-brake turn in a Scarborough cul-de-sac when police thought they had him trapped.

But Cyrus put his car into reverse and sped straight past them, York Crown Court heard.

Police tried to stop the Astra by placing a stinger on the road, but Cyrus drove round it by mounting another pavement and steering around a lamppost.

He then accelerated down Seamer Road and shot straight over the junction with Queen Margaret’s Road while the traffic lights were on red.

“He was driving on the wrong side of the carriageway into oncoming traffic,” said prosecutor David Lampitt.

He said that at one stage, Cyrus was travelling at 70mph in a 30mph zone. Officers tried to box him in using several vehicles, but Cyrus forced his way out of the trap, colliding with two police vehicles before ploughing over another grass verge and driving down a pavement.

Jailing Steven Cyrus for eight months, judge Stephen Ashurst told him: “It strikes me that somebody could have been killed by you driving the vehicle in that way.”