A 32-year-old “car-jacker” has been told he faces a long prison sentence after he admitted attacks on three motorists in Huddersfield and Halifax earlier this year.

Ryan John-Lewis had been due to stand trial at Bradford Crown Court yesterday but after discussions with his barrister he admitted two charges of robbery and one of attempted theft in relation to the incidents which all took place in May this year.

John-Lewis, of no fixed abode, was said to have been on prison licence for similar offending when he committed the latest attacks over a nine-day period.

On May 15 John-Lewis tried to steal a Mercedes CLS belonging to West Yorskhire lawyer Anastasis Tasou in the Leeds Road area of Huddersfield and five days later he took Kevin Thornburn’s Audi A4 from the Morrisons petrol station in Waterloo, Huddersfield.

Morrisons supermarket at Waterloo, Huddersfield.

Four days after that attack he took Warner Baxter’s Suzuki Swift vehicle from the Sainsbury’s complex on Wade Street in Halifax.

John-Lewis has also admitted related offending including driving while disqualified and his barrister Nigel Edwards conceded that the issue of dangerousness would have to be considered before John-Lewis was sentenced.

The defendant will be assessed by a psychiatrist, but Recorder Rachael Harrison told him: “This is a long custodial sentence, one way or another, for these matters. They are very serious indeed.”

His sentence hearing has yet to be fixed.