TWO teenage villains whose attempts to escape arrest nearly killed a policewoman were today starting long prison sentences.

Paul Robert William Barker, 18, dragged PC Sarah Knubley along the ground as he reversed a car at speed. Her clothing was caught in the vehicle and a wheel came within an inch of her before she was thrown clear, said Tom Storey, prosecuting.

Barker's passenger Michael Philip Morrissey, 19, had just kicked the policewoman in the stomach as he tried to evade arrest, York Crown Court heard.

"I regard you both as a couple of villains and I shall see to it you are both taken out of circulation for some time," Judge Paul Hoffman told the two serial car snatchers.

He told Barker: "I regard you in particular as a danger to the public. She (the policewoman) came within an inch of her life and I regard her as fortunate at the end to survive."

He added that PC Knubley was lucky to escape serious injury from Morrissey's assault.

Barker, of St Phillip's Grove, Clifton, York, was jailed for four years and 61 days and banned from driving for four years.

Morrissey, of Fossway, Heworth, York, was jailed for three years, one month and seven days and banned from driving for two years.

Both men admitted catalogues of car and shoplifting crime committed on parole, including a joint charge of abandoning a Vauxhall Astra on the level crossing at Station Road, Haxby, over the York to Scarborough railway line.

Mr Storey described how Barker twice led police on high-speed chases through York during which he went the wrong way down a one-way street, crashed into a police car, a parked car and bollards and drove at 50mph through a 20mph school zone.

During the second chase, on February 25, with Morrissey as passenger, he stopped at Clifton Moor. But when PC Knubley and another officer closed in to arrest the pair, they injured her and sped off. Shortly afterwards they abandoned the car on the railway line.

PC Knubley suffered bruising, cuts and abdominal pain.

Barristers for both men said they offended because they were heroin users.

Updated: 10:20 Saturday, June 09, 2001