A MOTHER who shopped her teenage son to the police sobbed with relief when he avoided jail.

Linda Allen did everything she could to keep her son, Liam, on the straight and narrow.

She even resorted to locking the household alcohol in their shed to stop the 19-year-old and his pals drinking.

Allen and his friends spent much of their spare time consuming beer, and some were coming close to being alcoholics.

When his mother was woken by her son trying to break into the shed at 3.30am on a Saturday, she called the police. Before officers got to the house in Newton Close, Darlington, the three youths had fled to a nearby park, a Court was told.

They were arrested soon after, but not before they had attacked a man walking home from a night out.

Raymond Thompson was knocked to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked in an unprovoked assault.

Police later arrested Allen, his 19-year-old friend, Nathan Russell, and another youth, who has not been charged.

Russell and Allen have since admitted attempted burglary and assault causing actual bodily harm on April 11.

At Teesside Crown Court Paul Newcombe, for Allen, said: “These two young men in the dock stand on the cusp of going to jail and they stand on the cusp of potentially having their lives destroyed by a moment of madness.”

Mr Newcombe told the judge, Recorder Jonathan Sandiford, that Allen was “ashamed and embarrassed”

by what he did, and could offer no explanation for getting involved in the assault.

He said he lost his job when the hotel he worked at was closed because of a fire, and “hit the bottle through boredom”.

The teenager told probation officers shortly after his arrest: “My mam’s not happy with me. She has seen that I am drinking worse and due to drinking I have let her down.

I have changed a bit to what I was and that’s due to the drink. Before, she could depend on me, but now she feels like she doesn’t know if I’m going to be coming home.”

Mrs Allen wiped away tears as she sat in the public gallery.

“She pressed the prosecution,”

Mr Newcombe said. “It is not often a mother appears as the main witness in a case.”

The pair were given community orders with two years of supervision by the Probation Service.

Allen was ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid community work. Russell was given 120 hours.

Peter Sabiston, for unemployed Russell, of Bolton Close, Darlington, said: “He is at a loss to explain why he behaved in that manner.”

Mr Recorder Sandiford told the pair: “The people who write such good things about you (in references given to the court) have to see this day, and it must be a sad day for them, indeed.”