A MOTHER has been left “devastated” after a vehicle which gives her disabled daughter a lifeline to the outside world was stolen from her driveway in York.

Six-year-old Chloe Wright is blind and unable to walk, so her mum Avril relied on her large people-carrier to hold the wheelchair the youngster must have with her whenever she leaves her home.

Thieves stole the gun-metal grey Citroen C4 Grand Picasso, which also contained Christmas presents, from outside the family’s home in Ninth Avenue, Heworth.

Police have now sent out an appeal for anybody who saw the crime to come forward.

“I just cannot believe somebody would do that,” said mother-of-three Avril, 32, who works as a dinner lady at St Oswald’s Primary School in Fulford.

“I heard a loud crash, jumped out of bed and looked out of the window. They had crashed into my neighbour’s recycling bins, then drove off down the road.

“The car quite obviously had three children’s seats in it, so obviously the kind of people who took it do not give a monkey’s about things like that.

“I am absolutely heartbroken – just devastated. I don’t know how I am going to cope without it.”

Chloe’s condition means she also has to be fed through a tube in her stomach and she cannot go out with her mother without the specially equipped vehicle.

Avril, who has two other daughters, Holly, eight, and three-year-old Evie, hired a car to get Chloe to school until the end of term, but said the lease on the vehicle expired today and she would not be able to afford another temporary replacement for the stolen people-carrier, which was provided by the social services.

She said she did not know when she will be provided with another and she would be stranded without a car.

She said Chloe may be unable to rejoin her classmates after the Christmas holidays because she now has no means of reaching Hob Moor Oaks School, Acomb.

Anybody who witnessed the theft, which occurred at about 1.20am, on Thursday , December 9, or saw the Citroen, registration number YO07 ORA, being driven away from Ninth Avenue, or who knows its whereabouts, should phone North Yorkshire Police on 0845 6060 247 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.