A man who stole an ambulance with an elderly patient and paramedic inside has been jailed for 21 months.
Marshall Leese was chased by police for two miles after taking the ambulance from outside the Royal Stoke University Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent.
He stopped at a petrol station on the A34 in Newcastle-under-Lyme and fled the vehicle but was found hiding nearby by a police sniffer dog.
The 32-year-old appeared at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court after previously admitting false imprisonment and aggravated vehicle taking following the theft on 25 March.
Recorder Ben Williams KC said Leese struck when the ambulance driver went into the hospital holding the keys.
“The driver had left it in a mode which meant it still was running while he went inside… leaving his colleague in the back with an elderly patient and that gentleman’s carer,” he said.
As the ambulance drove off, the paramedic leaned into the front compartment and shouted at Leese to stop.
“When you got behind the wheel and decided to keep going, once he’d made his presence known, you in terms committed the offence of false imprisonment intentionally although you may not have thought about it in that way,” Williams told the defendant.
The paramedic was “terrified” and grabbed a metal pole which he threatened to hit Leese with, the recorder said.
Had the ambulance crashed, the patient, who was in his 80s, would not have survived, he added.
The court heard while Leese did not drive at a high speed, he drove through red lights and put drivers and pedestrians in danger.