Disqualified driver stole taxi and drove it off in Irchester
A 25-year-old man who took a taxi from its owner has been sentenced.
Northampton Crown Court heard how John Joyce was already banned from driving before the incident in December last year.
But that didn’t stop the 25-year-old from robbing a taxi driver of his 20-plate Toyota Prius in Gipsy Lane, Irchester, where Joyce lived in the traveller site.
Joyce was sentenced for one count of the robbery of £100 in cash and a mobile phone from the taxi driver, a second of taking the car without consent, driving while disqualified and driving without insurance.
All the incidents, to which he pleaded guilty, are said to have taken place on December 16 last year. He denied an accusation of being in possession of a knife during the incident, and the charge was left to lie on file.
At the same hearing he was also sentenced for assaulting a woman in Desborough in December 2023. A charge of sexual assault was dropped at an earlier hearing.
He was imprisoned for a total of 46 months and disqualified from driving for 35 months.
The judge took into account Joyce’s antecedent history. He was previously banned from driving just a month before the theft of the taxi when he was caught driving a Land Rover Freelander, drunk, in The Embankment, Wellingborough. He was one-and-a-half times the drink drive limit and had no insurance when he crashed the vehicle, then failed to stop.
And just another month before that, in October 2024, he’d been before magistrates for driving a Renault Scenic in Irchester with no insurance. He was given six points on his licence and fined £120.