A BOY aged 15 who crashed a stolen car through the front of a house causing up to £100,000 damage has been locked up.

The teenager, from Colchester, admitted burgling a house for the keys to a Land Rover Discovery, before smashing into a semi-detached house, in Harwich Road, Colchester.

The teen, who cannot be named because he is under 18, was sentenced to a 14-month detention order.

Yesterday, Harwich Youth Court heard the boy had also admitted making malicious phone calls to a girl, stealing an iPod from a shop, threatening a police officer and trying to steal computers from a school in Colchester. The offences were committed in the past year.

The boy’s dad made an emotional appeal for a lenient sentence.

He said: “We’re horrified listening to this list of things. It goes against what I recognise. When he’s with me, he comes to work and I hear nothing but good things.

“I don’t want his life ruined. He doesn’t realise what he’s done and needs to break the cycle.”

The court heard the boy lost control of the stolen Land Rover and crashed it into a house causing damage of up to £100,000. He fled the scene, but was arrested shortly after.

Roger Brice, mitigating, said: “Before last year, he had never been in court in his life. I know things have happened of a personal nature and that’s coincided with what’s happened here.”

Chairman of the bench, Robert Elden, gave the boy a four-month sentence for attempted burglary of the college and another ten months, to run consecutively, for theft of a motor vehicle.

Two four-month sentences will run concurrently for making malicious phone calls and threatening a police office.

The Gazette’s application to the court to name the boy was refused.