A “NAIVE” man who drunkenly took his mother’s car and drove it at 90mph during a police chase through Bradford has been spared jail.

Kasim Khan, 20, appeared at Bradford Crown Court last December after pleading guilty to charges of aggravated vehicle-taking, dangerous driving, and failing to provide a specimen.

The court heard he had been driving to buy cigarettes in his mum’s VW Golf, which he had taken without her permission, at around 4.30am on November 3 when he failed to stop for police.

He reached 90mph on Great Horton Road before hitting the pavement as he turned into Frank Street. Khan only narrowly avoided a head-on collision with an oncoming car as he entered Cecil Avenue before fleeing the vehicle on foot, evading capture from officers.

After checks revealed that the car was registered to his mother, officers later attended Khan’s home address on Spring Place, Great Horton, Bradford, and found him upstairs in bed. He provided a positive breath test for alcohol but then later refused five attempts for a further test to be taken at the police station.

Alan Bridger, mitigating for Khan at the December hearing, described his client as “diminutive in stature and diminutive in maturity.”

When the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC, suggested refusing the breath tests may have “indicated deviousness”, Mr Bridger replied: “I would say stupidity.”

The judge said Khan presented as a “rabbit in the headlights”, and agreed to defer sentencing for six months until yesterday, ordering the defendant to complete 100 hours of unpaid work, a six-month curfew, and a responsible road users course. The court was told that Khan had kept to all the requirements of the community order.

Judge Durham Hall said a “gut instinct” must have told him that locking up the “naive” Khan last year would have been “disproportionate.”

In response, Mr Bridger said: “You extended substantial mercy to this young man, and he hasn’t betrayed it. If it was an instinct, it was well-founded.”

Judge Durham Hall said Khan, who is due to start a college course in September, had done “remarkably well.”

Imposing a six-month prison sentence, suspended for a year, and an 18-month driving ban, he told the defendant: “You mustn’t make this mistake again. Immature or not, you will be going into custody.”