A teenage mum-to-be has been warned she will be locked up if she gets into any more trouble.

April Crookston, 17, was today prosecuted for failing to carry out community penalties given to her by a court for attacking a girl on a bus.

Judge Les Spittle spared the teenager jail, but told her: "You get no more chances - you better make sure you don't appear back before this court."

Crookston was given a two-year community rehabilitation order after she admitted breaching a previous order of the same length and a 80-hour community punishment order.

The judge added: "If you breach this order and come back before the court, there really is very little option other than a custodial sentence, given the nature of the original offence."

Prosecutor Ian West told Teesside Crown Court that Crookston and two pals attacked Tamara Hanley on a bus between Middlesbrough and nearby Billingham in April 2004.

One of the drunken yobs had made a racist remark towards the youngster's boyfriend and when she looked at the group in disgust, Crookston got to her feet and twice punched her in the face.

The courting couple got off the bus but were followed by the gang and while two of the girls knocked Tamara to the ground and punched her, Crookston took a run-up and kicked her in the head.

Crookston, of Queensway, Billingham, is due to give birth in August, but has been abandoned by the baby's father, the court heard.

Mr West described the teenager's criminal record as "a lamentable history of drinking and disorderly behaviour" stretching back to when she was aged just 15.

Crookston's barrister Nigel Soppitt said she was "almost an alcoholic" but has addressed her drinking problems and has been out of trouble for a year.

He said she had failed to turn up at probation service-run appointments for her community order because many of the other criminals were drug addicts and she was the only female.

Mr Soppitt said Crookston has an intense dislike of drug abuse because she was abandoned along with her sisters by her addict mother. .