A BURGLAR led police on a high-speed chase reaching 76mph after taking a Range Rover from a house before finally being apprehended in his own home in his dressing gown.

Jason Peter Hepworth, 39, took the car from a home in Halifax after smashing a window with a stone in an early morning raid leaving the occupants, a mother and daughter, terrified.

The stolen vehicle was fitted with a tracking device and after police were alerted Hepworth led them through several Bradford estates before crashing near his Buttershaw home.

He then ran off and the police officers lost him but a police helicopter had also been alerted and he was tracked to his home in Burneston Gardens.

When police knocked on the door Hepworth answered it in his dressing gown but officers saw a pile of clothes which they recognised he had been wearing and he was arrested.

He was jailed by Judge Jonathan Rose at Bradford Crown Court to a total of 21 months in prison for dangerous driving and drink-driving.

He was also sentenced to 20 months and 15 months concurrently for burglary and three attempted burglaries respectively and disqualified from driving for three years.

Hepworth admitted all the charges.

Philip Adams, prosecuting, told the court that the burglary and attempted burglaries all occurred in the middle of the night at occupied homes in Greetland, Halifax, on February 20 this year.

He said Hepworth was recorded on homeowners' CCTV systems trying the door handles of cars parked in driveways and the front doors of properties as well.

In one incident he was seen to put a glove on one hand before he tried the door and a good quality picture enabled him to be subsequently identified.

Hepworth then moved onto another house with the Range Rover on the driveway. He smashed a window with a stone and grabbed a set of house and car keys which he used to enter the property, waking one of the female occupants when he left by slamming the back door.

Mr Adams said he drove off in the Range Rover but police spotted him at 4.30am on Beacon Road in Bradford. He accelerated to 60mph in a 30mph zone when he realised he was being followed and turned into Thorncroft Road where he hit 65mph despite speed calming measures.

He failed to stop at the junction with Reevy Avenue and reached speeds of 76mph going across two mini roundabouts. After turning into Maxwell Road he travelled across a grassy area to reach Bisdale Green, eventually crashing into a wall at Burneston Gardens.

After he was arrested, Hepworth gave a breath alcohol reading of 41 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of breath at a police station, the legal limit being 35mcg.

The court heard that after being convicted 31 times for 50 offences over the years, Hepworth had settled down and stayed out of trouble when he got a job as an asbestos stripper but he drank to excess after losing that, his relationship ended and he went back to a life of crime.

He now has a chronic lung condition because of his asbestos job.

Sentencing him, Judge Jonathan Rose said that his life was an unhappy story but the period he spent out of trouble "illustrates the sort of man you could be again".

However, he said he had little choice but to send him back to prison.

He added: "It was a night of house burglaries. It was terrifying to the occupants of the house.

"You didn't target them but the risk you take is that there could be people inside."