Man arrested after 30-minute early morning pursuit on treacherous roads in North Yorkshire and East Riding

The temperature plummeted to around -10C in some parts of the county last night but the bitterly cold conditions didn’t deter North Yorkshire Police's specialist operations unit who were out patrolling the 6,000 miles of roads in the county.

At around 1.45am this morning (Nov 22), a roads policing officer spotted a van parked on a rural road at Flixton, near Filey.

The officer put on his blue lights, but the driver didn’t want to stop and accelerated away.

A 30-minute pursuit ensued along numerous rural roads which were covered with ice and snow.

In York, a Force Incident Managers was monitoring the live video footage and radio commentary to assess the level of risk to the public and people involved.

Due to the treacherous weather conditions the pursuit remained at fairly low speeds.

The van continued towards Filey, before turning off on the main road towards Grindale – it then went over the border into the Humberside area until a stinger device in Burton Fleming successfully stung all four tyres.

The vehicle continued for a short distance before it was abandoned by the driver who made off on foot.

North Yorkshire Police were joined by officers from Humberside Police and the driver was detained in a garden after a short foot chase.

The driver, a man in his 30s, was arrested on suspicion of numerous offences which include dangerous driving, fail to stop for the police, drug driving, theft of a motor vehicle and possession of a suspected class A and class B drug.

He remains in police custody.

Chief Insp Tom Ibbetson from North Yorkshire Police’s Specialist Operations Unit said: “This is another example of great work by our operations unit during proactive patrols in the early hours of the morning.

“We work around the clock in any condition to target the people who cause the most harm to us and our communities.

“There is no let up, and we hope that word is getting out that North Yorkshire is not a place where you can get away with committing crime.”