.Two drunken teenagers who took a car and crashed it into a stream have paid a high price for the crimes they committed after leaving a Lowestoft nightclub.

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Two drunken teenagers who took a car and crashed it into a stream have paid a high price for the crimes they committed after leaving a Lowestoft nightclub.

One received a custodial sentence and both were ordered to pay more than £1,600 each in compensation when they appeared before Lowestoft Magistrates' Court yesterday.

Robert Willgoss and Oliver Bowles, both 19, were sentenced after pleading guilty to numerous charges at a previous hearing.

Solicitors representing both defendants said their clients were drunk when they took a car and crashed it into a stream running alongside Lowestoft's new relief road.

Beforehand, during the early hours of March 29, the pair broke into a car and let of its handbrake, causing it to crash into a sign, hurled a rock through the window of a van and tried to steal a Vauxhall Cavalier.

Willgoss, of Monarch Way, Carlton Colville, was more than twice the legal drink drive limit when he drove the Toyota Rav 4 taken from Beech Road, also in Carlton Colville.

He was sentenced to 12 weeks in a young offenders' institution, ordered to pay £1,683 compensation and banned from driving for three years.

Bowles, of London Road South, Lowestoft, was sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work, 12 months of supervision, a year-long driving ban and was ordered to pay the same amount of compensation as Willgoss.

Both defendants pleaded guilty to two charges of taking vehicles without consent, attempted theft and criminal damage. Willgoss also admitted drink-driving, driving without a licence and insurance and being in breach of a licence issued after he was released from an earlier custodial sentence.

The compensation will be paid to Fiona and Glenn Nudd who used the specially-adapted Toyota Rav 4 to take their disabled son to school. The car was written-off, but the couple could not claim any insurance because they had left inadvertently left the ignition key inside the vehicle on the night it was taken.

Richard Mann, for Willgoss, said: “He is extremely ashamed of what he has done. It is obvious he has got an alcohol problem.”

Rob Barley, for Bowles, said his client was “significantly under the influence” of alcohol and was ashamed by his actions.