A 20-year-old man was today beginning a 15-year sentence for attempting to murder a Kent policeman.

PC Guy Miller was seriously injured in December last year when he was struck by his own patrol car in Kings Hill, near West Malling.

The thug who got into the car and reversed over the PC, Ricky Hales, from Deptford, south east London, was sentenced at the Old Bailey. He will serve his sentence at a young offenders' institution.

Maxwell Lancaster, aged 18, from Catford, south east London, was jailed for seven years for aggravated vehicle taking.

PC Miller was detained in hospital for several months after being struck by his own patrol car. He will never fully recover.

He had been attempting to arrest the two men after they were seen riding a stolen motorbike.

At Maidstone Crown Court earlier this year, Hales admitted handling a stolen motorbike and taking the police car but denied the murder bid charge.

Sentencing Hales, Judge Warwick McKinnon told the offender that PC Miller had been fortunate not to have lost his life.

PC Miller, who was in court in a wheelchair to hear the sentencing, said later that he now wished to get on with his life and to continue with his career in the police service.

"It brings a chapter to an end," he stressed.

At the time of the incident, PC Miller was a traffic policeman based at Kent Police traffic headquarters at Coldharbour at Aylesford, near Maidstone.