A BANNED driver has been jailed after he rammed a police car in Plymouth with a Mini which he had stolen as it was being handwashed in Exeter.
Vidal Ritchie leapt into the car when it was left running for a few moments and sped off in it. He was spotted as he filled up at Sainsbury’s in Marsh Mills and reversed into a police car as he tried to escape.
His arrest ended a crime spree which included smuggling drugs into prison, breaking into a home in Plymouth , taking a car and crashing it at 120 mph on the M62 in his home town of Manchester.
He was banned from driving at the time of all the motoring offences and told police he was a danger because he liked taking cars and driving them.
Ritchie, aged 30, from Salford , who was living at Limburners Road, Plympton, admitted conveying cannabis and mobile phones into Channings Wood Prison, Newton Abbot, burglary, taking a car without consent, dangerous driving, aggravated vehicle taking, criminal damage, driving while disqualified, and fraud.
He was jailed for a total of four years and banned from driving for two years by Judge Geoffrey Mercer, QC, at Exeter Crown Court.
He told him: ‘The taking of cannabis into prison is a serious matter although I accept you may have been placed under some pressure but you were also hoping for some reward.
‘You also burgled a woman who was asleep in her home and I have to consider the totality of the sentences.’
Mr Tom Bradnock, prosecuting, said the prison offences happened while Ritchie was serving a sentence for earlier crimes at Channings Wood. A package was thrown over the wall which he picked up and put into his laundry bag.
He discarded it when he realised he was about to be searched but it was found and a total of 143 grams of cannabis and ten phones or SIM cards were found. He later told his girlfriend in a phone call he had been offered £3,000.
He was released in 2015 and in October he broke into a woman’s home in Radford Road, Plymouth, while she was asleep upstairs and stole her laptop and car keys.
He took her Renault Clio which he crashed on the M62 in Manchester. He ran away but his DNA was found in the wreckage. He told police he lost control at 120 mph. He told them: ‘I am a danger. I haven’t got a licence but I like driving.’
He took a Mini Countryman from the forecourt of a hand carwash in Exwick Road, Exeter, in December 2015 when it had been left running as it was being valeted.
The car was spotted by a police the next day as Ritchie filled up at the Sainsbury’s filling station in Plymouth, where he left without paying leaving a false name.
The officer called for backup and Ritchie was blocked in by marked police cars but escaped by ramming the unmarked police vehicle behind him and driving out the wrong way through the one-way system.
Ritchie, who refused legal representation, said he had been forced into smuggling the drugs into prison and was beaten up when he tried to back out of the scheme.
He said: ‘I have been in the segregation unit at Exeter Prison since January because the same people are being held there. I have been in a cell with just a bed and a toilet.
‘I just want to get this sorted out and serve by time and get out so I can start again.’