A teenager burgled a family’s house to steal a car to try to get home from a New Year’s Eve night out, a court heard.

Joshua Davies, 18, got into the home of Angela Mountain and her family, near Skipton town centre, through a garage door in the early hours of January 1 this year, prosecutor Giles Bridge told Bradford Crown Court last Friday.

At 4.30am Mrs Mountain was awoken by the sound of an alarm and banging in her garage.

A Mini car belonging to Mrs Mountain’s daughter, who was out that night, had been parked on the drive in such a way it would have had to have been moved in order to move an Audi car, Mr Bridge told the court.

He said Davies had gone into her daughter’s ground floor bedroom and taken keys to the Mini, an iPod nano and a phone before going upstairs into the lounge where the Audi keys were kept.

Davies moved the Mini, then moved the Audi, reversing it on to the drive of an adjoining house, causing £2,000 of damage to a set of bollards, Mr Bridge said.

Mrs Mountain saw the defendant reverse the car into a nearby cul-de-sac and went to challenge him, asking what he thought he was doing, to which he replied: “I’m trying to get home,” the court heard. She immediately got the impression he was drunk.

A statement from the family read to the court said that Mrs Mountain’s daughter was now frightened to sleep in her own bedroom and all their sleeping habits had been affected.

It said the family now wanted to move out of Skipton as a result of the incident.

When the offence was committed, Davies, of Sycamore Grove, Keighley, was subject to a driving disqualification for a previous driving-related offence.

Judge Colin Burn told Davies his “moment of stupidity” had had a profound effect on both his own family and the family of Mrs Mountain.

He was sentenced to six months in a young offenders’ institution for aggravated vehicle-taking, nine months for the burglary and one month for driving while disqualified, all suspended for two years.

For driving without insurance he was disqualified from holding a licence for two years.

He was placed on supervision for two years and ordered to undertake a medium-level activity requirement and 180 hours’ unpaid work.

The court was told Davies – who had pleaded guilty to the offences – has stopped drinking and had expressed remorse for his actions, having written a letter of apology to the victims.

Jayne Beckett, for Davies, said: “This is not the sort of person that one usually finds in a crown court.”