AN underage girl who went missing from home shortly after Christmas spent two nights in a hotel with an older male teenager, a court heard.

The pair booked into a village coaching inn, near Darlington, days after Connor Dulson was warned to keep away from the girl following complaints to police by her mother.

Durham Crown Court was told the warning, by way of a formal notice, was made on Christmas Eve, but the girl disappeared from home on December 28.

Peter Sabiston, prosecuting, said police inquiries established Dulson, 19, and the girl booked into The George in Piercebridge, on December 29.

They were seen on CCTV at 10.30pm in the bar, where staff refused them service.

Mr Sabiston said through the vigilance of hotel staff, the couple were seen taking a bus to Darlington at 3.30pm on December 31.

Police were able to intercept the bus, from which both Dulson and the girl fled in opposite directions.

Mr Sabiston said the girl was taken into protective custody, while Dulson was detained a short time later in the Green Dragon pub, in Darlington.

He was arrested and reminded of the warning given to him only a week earlier. He claimed that he believed her to be aged 16 or 17.

But having been detained in custody since his arrest, Dulson, of Plantation Terrace, Fir Tree, near Crook, admitted a single count of detaining a child without parental permission.

Stephen Hamill, mitigating, said it was not a case of the defendant abducting the girl, as she played a part in events, herself.

But he described Dulson as “immature” and said it was time he began to grow up.

Mr Hamill said none of his previous convictions were for any similar matter.

Judge Jonathan Carroll imposed a ten-month sentence in a young offenders’ institution and told Dulson, who is 20 today, it was made “abundantly clear” to him to leave the girl alone just prior to Christmas.

A restraining order prohibits him from contacting the girl for three years.