A TEENAGER threw tiles into a York street during a rooftop standoff with police York magistrates heard.

Michael Brian Kitching, 18, climbed onto the roof of his family's home in Birstwith Drive, Acomb, after an argument with his mother over his drinking, prosecutor Jane Chadwick.

When police arrived, the aggressive teenager threw down roof tiles and damaged the roof of a neighbouring house during the 30-minute incident.

Police closed the road while they persuaded Kitching to climb down, helped by firefighters with ladders,.

Kitching pleaded guilty to unlawful violence, criminal damage and four other unrelated offences including a second criminal damage, theft, being drunk and disorderly and failure to answer police bail.

Magistrates ordered him to do 120 hours' community punishment, and repay £40 he had stolen from a rail passenger's handbag. But they did not make him pay for the damage he caused because he lived on incapacity benefit.

Kitching's solicitor, Kevin Blount, said he had such great difficulties assuming the responsibilities of being an adult that he was not yet able to hold down a job and had taken to alcohol because he had nothing to fill his days.

Mrs Chadwick said that on December 14, a passenger inadvertently left her handbag in a waiting room at York Railway Station before boarding a train home. Later Kitching handed the bag, minus the £200 it had held, to staff.

He said he had been with two girls who had taken most of the money and given him £40, but he had not wanted to deprive the bag's owner of other things in it, so he had given it to staff.

On December 4, Kitching punched and broke a shop window in Ripon, Mrs Chadwick said, and on January 29, he swore at staff and police after he was ejected from the Old Orleans pub in Low Ousegate, York.

Mr Blount said Kitching was a vulnerable young man who needed considerable long-term social services help to make him capable of holding down a job.

Updated: 10:58 Friday, March 28, 2003