A PASSENGER in a stolen car who fled after a crash was recognised by a police officer who saw television footage of the incident.

Stephen Blagg ran from the scene when the Volkswagen Golf collided with bollards at the junction of Wellesley Road and Saltwells Road in Middlesbrough.

Officers had earlier followed the hatchback after it went through a red light on January 9 last year, prosecutor Martin Towers told Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

It is not known which television cameras were on the scene, but it is thought it was a production team for Police Interceptors, which documents the work of traffic patrol teams.

Blagg, 40, of Macbean Street North Ormesby, Middlesbrough, admitted a charge of allowing himself to be carried in a car taken without the owner’s consent, and was jailed for five months.

He is already in custody after receiving a four-year prison sentence for burglary in November last year, Judge Sean Morris was told.

Blagg has 142 offences on his record going back to the 1990s.

The judge told him: “You have got sticky fingers and it is time that you grew up. At your age, you should not be knocking around in prison. It’s a young man’s game, isn’t it?”

Helen Chapman, mitigating, said Blagg has kicked his drug addiction since being locked up, and has a job behind bars at Holme House Prison, Stockton.

Mr Towers said the driver of the car was given a community order at an earlier court hearing.

He added: “The driver lost control on a left-hand bend and crashed into bollards. As a police officer approached, it was reversed towards him, and he had to jump out of the way. He suffered a slight injury to his hip.

“It crashed into another police vehicle and the occupants ran away, in this defendant’s case, successfully, but there was some TV footage of the incident and police were able to identify the defendant as the front seat passenger.”