A TEENAGER was driven away in a car by two strangers supposedly going for cash to buy his friend’s motor scooter.

The incident took place as the 15-year-old and his 16- year-old companion were on their way sell the scooter at a meeting in the Tesco Extra car park, Gilesgate, Durham City, on the evening of October 21, last year.

Durham Crown Court was told a car approached them and two male occupants began asking about the scooter.

The driver, David Dunn, said they would buy it and told the owner to put it in the boot, despite his protests that he had already arranged to sell it.

They told the 15-year-old to go with them while they went for the money.

Mr Towers said the car headed down Sunderland Road, but after a police patrol vehicle passed, Dunn told the boy to get out.

He ran back to his friend and police were informed.

The court was told it was one of a spate of offences committed as Dunn “spiralled”

back to drug use in the months before Christmas.

It included a break-in causing damage at a school building development in Esh Winning, near Durham, theft of a flag pole and damaging two houses being built in Low Willington, then resisting two police officers as he was arrested in his car after refusing to give a breath specimen.

Dunn, 32, of Moorland Close, Sunnybrow, near Willington, County Durham, admitted child abduction, failing to provide a breath specimen, two counts each of burglary, theft, damaging property and assaulting the officers.

He also asked for three shoplifting thefts to be taken into consideration.

Liam O’Brien, mitigating, said the former serviceman took “great strides” to keep out of trouble from 2007, but lapsed between October and December.

“He does have aspirations to lead a drug and trouble-free life, and has cut back the amount of drugs to a significant degree, but realises there’s a lot of work to be done,” he said.

Dunn was jailed for three years and five months.