A Cornish carjacker tried to outrun police at 120mph in a stolen car after pushing the female driver out of her seat at a motorway service station forecourt.

Samuel Owen got into the passenger seat of the VW Caravelle people carrier as the driver was about to pull out from the filling station on the M5 at Cullompton, and demanded she drive off.

She told him to get out but he attacked her and forced her out of the driver’s door before climbing into her seat and roaring off at high speed. He was chased by police for 48 miles before police forced the car into a crash barrier to stop it.

Owen was trying to get to his home in Cornwall after suffering a psychotic episode in whic he believed his wife and five children in West Cornwall would be murdered unless he got back to save them.

He drove west on the A38 before going the wrong way round the roundabout at the entrance to the Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, and doubling back on himself.

He reached speeds of 120mph before veering off the dual carriageway at the last minute at Ashburton when he saw a line of slow-moving rush hour traffic ahead. He was trying to rejoin the A38 heading back towards Cornwall when police stopped him.

The entire chase was carried out in heavy rain on the morning of December 13 last year. It lasted 42 minutes, during which Owen covered 48 miles, much of it while going well over the speed limit.

The owner of the car was left battered and bruised on the forecourt of the petrol station. She read out an impact statement saying she has struggled with anxiety and needed counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder.

She is a teacher at a primary school in Devon and has had to change her route to work to avoid passing the service station, because she cannot bear to go back there.

Her three children would normally have travelled with her, but were not in the car that morning. She said: “I don’t think I will ever fully recover from what this man has done to me.”

A judge at Exeter Crown Court praised her courage and apologised to her for not sending Owen straight to jail.

Recorder Mr Richard Paige said he was suspending Owen’s sentence because he was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time and was under the delusion his wife and five children in West Cornwall would be murdered unless he got back to save them.

Owen was recorded on the dashcam of the police cars pursuing him as being on the phone as he drove at high speeds, but it turned out he was calling the police to alert them to what he perceived as a threat to his family in Penzance.

He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after his arrest and doctors concluded he was in the grip of a paranoid episode at the time, possibly as a result of taking a so-called ‘happy pill’ which had been offered to him by another patient at a support group meeting.

It led him to leave home on December 12 to drive to his brother’s home in Barnsley but his car broke down at Cullompton. He spent the night in it before becoming convinced that he and his family were about to be murdered.

Owen, aged 34, of Springfield Road, Goldsithney, Penzance, admitted aggravated vehicle taking, battery, and dangerous driving and was jailed for a year, suspended for two years, ordered to do 80 hours unpaid work and pay £110 compensation and banned from driving for 18 months.

Addressing the victim, Recorder Paige said: “You may think he should have been sent to prison but having seen all the evidence, I have decided this is the best way to impose a sentence. It does not belittle your suffering or what you are continuing to suffer.”

He said she had been very brave to read out her personal statement in court and he accepted the impact on her had been devastating and life changing.

He told Owen: “You made the deliberate decision to ignore the rules of the road in a prolonged course of driving in an obviously dangerous manner. You evaded the police at speed significantly in excess of the limit.”

Mr Ed Bailey, prosecuting, said Owen forced the driver of the car out at Cullompton and then drove on the A38 at speeds of up to 120 mph in heavy rain while swerving to prevent police boxing him in.

He almost crashed as he left the eastbound carriageway at Ashburton, having doubled back on himself in Plymouth, and carried on driving even when some of the tyres were deflated by a stinger ay Deep Lane, Plympton - where he left the A38 and was tagged to force him into a barrier.

Mr Paul Dentith, defending, said psychiatric reports showed that Owen’s actions were the result of a paranoid and psychotic episode. He had threatened suicide two nights earlier but had been talked out of it by his wife.

He has five children and used to run his own business but is now on benefits. His condition has improved with treatment.

Mr Dentith said Owen’s paranoia was so extreme that day that he believed he saw his children as ghosts and had visual and auditory hallucinations which made him believe he had to get back to Cornwall to save their lives.