FOUR robbers who carried out a professionally planned raid as cash was being delivered to a store are starting lengthy jail sentences.

The quartet, wearing forensic suits and balaclavas, escaped with £115,000 after two security guards were manhandled and threatened with an axe, outside Tesco, in Delves Lane, Consett, County Durham, on Thursday, July 7.

But, after abandoning and setting fire to one stolen getaway car, they were pursued in a second during a dangerous 80-mile high speed chase, involving the use of a police helicopter.

All four were arrested shortly after abandoning the vehicle when it collided with railings, having run out of petrol, in Rawcliffe, York, an hour after the robbery.

Durham Crown Court heard the money, the axe and the clothing worn in the raid were all recovered.

Andrew Mark Nye, Jamie Paul Harry Emmett, Anthony Hughes and Ben Dyer, all from Leeds, each pleaded guilty to robbery at their first crown court appearance, on July 22.

Nye also admitted dangerous driving in a BMW 530 estate car during the chase.

Nine year prison sentences were yesterday imposed on Emmett, 34, and 28-year-old Hughes, both of Coronation Parade, and Nye, 29, of no fixed abode, but also said to be from the Leeds area.

The court heard all had served previous lengthy prison sentences for similar offending.

Dyer, 18, of Wykebeck Avenue, who was described as “not the prime mover”, was sent to a young offenders’ institution for six years.

The court heard they struck in front of terrified shoppers and parents on their way to collect children from school in mid-afternoon.

Robin Turton, prosecuting, said the shaken security guards had received counselling as a result of the ordeal, the third such robbery one of them has endured.

The first getaway car, a Honda Civic, was burned out in Lambton Drive, a nearby residential area, damaging another vehicle in the process.

Defence barristers Craig Hassall, for Nye and Emmett, Graham Parkin, for Hughes, and Simon Alexander, for Dyer, pointed out that no one was physically injured in the raid.

Jailing them, Judge Paul Sloan said: “This was, in any view, a professionally planned robbery on a security vehicle involved in a delivery. You travelled from Leeds in those stolen cars and your target was a security vehicle making a cash delivery to the store.

“It’s obvious shoppers were terrified and badly shaken by what they had seen.”

Judge Sloan also banned Nye from driving for a year.