A CAR driven by a suspected drink driver collided with a police van and a lorry before smashing through a garden fence in Northumberland.

The car, carrying a man and a woman, was tailed by police for 30 miles on the A1 from Berwick to Alnwick in the early hours of yesterday.

It came to a halt only after crashing through a fence in Alnwick, when the man inside fled.

He was later caught and the duo were arrested by police on suspicion of burglary.

Last night, the owner of the house whose fence the car crashed through said it was lucky no-one had been hurt.

Northumbria Police received a report of a possible drunk driver at Ord Road in Berwick at 5.38am yesterday.

A police helicopter was scrambled alongside patrol cars and the red Rover was located on the A1.

The vehicle was followed as it headed south at what police called “a safe distance”.

Officers in patrol cars used their blue lights in an attempt to make the car pull over but the driver continued.

The Rover was involved in a minor collision with a lorry near Alnwick, the driver of which was uninjured.

It then made its way into the town, colliding with a police van near an industrial estate. The officer in the van again escaped injury.

Finally the Rover crashed through the garden fence of a house on St James Estate in the town, owned by the Anderson family.

Geoffrey Anderson, 61, told how he had arrived home from his job as track maintenance for Network Rail at 6am.

Just 10 minutes after he went to bed, at 6.30am, the car crashed through his fence.

His twin daughters Amy and Emma, 15, pupils at the town’s Duchess Community High School, and wife Caroline, 48, were all in bed asleep. Mr Anderson heard nothing but the girls, whose bedroom looks over the back garden, were woken by the noise of the crash and the helicopter hovering overhead.

The family looked out to find the car, by then unoccupied, had gone through the fence. A number of police officers were in the garden.

Mr Anderson said: “Nobody was hurt, that is the main thing. It was just as well there was nobody going around.” He added that the car had gone over his prized leek patch, which he maintains in preparation for local shows, but which is bare at this time of year.

Mr Anderson, who gave a statement to police, was last night waiting to find out whether his insurance company would cover the cost of repairing the damaged fence. A 27-year-old woman was arrested at the scene on suspicion of burglary. A 30-year-old man fled the vehicle and was later caught nearby, following a search by officers on the ground assisted by those in the helicopter.

He was also arrested on suspicion of burglary.

The pair were in police custody yesterday with enquiries into the incident ongoing.