A BLACK Country teenager who used a car he stole from a house in Dudley in a robbery at a Rowley Regis store has been locked up for five years three months.

Howard Searle, prosecuting, told Wolverhampton Crown Court an Audi was taken along with a Volkswagen Polo in a burglary in The Oval, Russells Hall.

He said that four days later 18-year-old Jac Vaughan made off without paying for fuel he put into the Polo before he raided another house in the Dudley area and a second Audi was stolen.

Vaughan was then the member of a gang who used that Audi in a robbery at the One Stop Shop in Throne Road where they got away with property including cigarettes.

Vaughan, of Stour Road, West Bromwich, admitted two burglary charges, two of making off without payment, three car thefts and robbery.

Judge John Warner sent him to a young offenders institution and ruled it was only his age that had saved Vaughan from a custodial sentence that would have been "considerably longer."

The court was told by Mr Searle the teenager committed all the offences over a 15 days period before he was finally arrested.