No wonder he’s laughing – jury found he was to thin to be Porsche vandal

A finance worker was cleared of causing £2,000 damage to a Porsche Panamera after claiming that the man filmed keying the car was too fat.

David Smith, 44, insisted he was not the vandal captured on the Dash Cam of the luxury motor parked in Chingford Mount Cemetery.

Smith was reported to police by members of the public when the footage went viral after being posted online as part of a police appeal.

But he insisted it was not him and claimed he was probably at the library looking for jobs.

Referring to the image of the person on DashCam, he told Stratford Magistrates Court: ‘That person is carrying a lot more weight. This is my natural weight.’

Magistrates cleared him of the charge after finding that they could not be certain beyond reasonable doubt that Smith was the person on the footage.

Chair Sharon Higgins told him: ‘We have listened carefully to everything that has been said to us and in terms of the video footage itself, we do believe that the person videoed was responsible for the damage to the car.

‘This bench finds that we cannot be certain beyond reasonable doubt that the person on the CCTV was Mr Smith.

‘Therefore we find this case not proved.’

Driver Noshav Khiljee said he drove to the cemetery just after 11am that morning with his mother, brother, sister and cousins.

When he returned to his car he noticed ‘that one side of the car was fully scratched from one end to the other’.

‘It was a little bit on the front panel, from the door going all the way across to the back door onto the back panel,’ he said.

Mr Khiljee said he had only purchased the car a few months earlier brand-new.

‘Because it is a pretty expensive car we have a Dash Cam,’ Mr Khiljee said.

‘It shows clearly someone coming up, looking around and scratching the car.’

Asked if the damage could have been caused before the incident, he replied: ‘Absolutely not.’

He claimed he looked over the car after having it cleaned the previous day, adding: ‘I checked it closely – nothing was there.’

Prosecutor Carlo Talacchi told the court: ‘Whilst he is away with his family in the cemetery a person the Crown say is the defendant, Mr Smith, is initially seated on a bench.

‘He gets up, looks around himself, approaches the car and goes to the near-side of the vehicle and the Crown say that at that time he has scratched the vehicle down the near-side of the doors.

‘The incident is captured on a dashboard camera which is in the vehicle of the complainant.’

Smith was arrested on 28 January this year following anonymous tip-offs from members of the public.

He told officers in interview that the person in the footage was ‘definitely not’ him while the cemetery was ‘out of [his] way to get home’.

When asked if he would damage a car, he replied: ‘No, never. I have too much to lose – never have, never will.’

Smith told the court he would have been at the library looking for jobs on the other side of Chingford as he has no internet access.

‘I worked in finance and a lot of the positions I am searching for are advertised on various job sites and also I recieve emails from various agencies,’ he said.

Smith, of  Stapleford Close, Chingford, east London denied criminal damage and was cleared.