Last updated 13:03, Friday, 24 October 2008

A man from west Cumbria admitted in court that the welder’s mask worn by a criminal trying to cut a cash machine open with an oxyacetylene torch was his.

But Maurice Smith, 46, said he had not been involved in the botched raid at Newby Bridge.

And he said he had not known until afterwards that his mask had been taken by someone else.

Smith, 46, of Town Croft, Dearham, Maryport, was alleged to be one of two men involved in the attempted raid on the forecourt of Newby Bridge Motors garage on the night of November 8 last year.

He was arrested because his DNA was on the sweatband inside the mask found in a getaway car.

But at Carlisle Crown Court he told the jury the mask must have been taken from his house by another man, 46-year-old Paul Barcock, of Brooklands Avenue, Maryport, who was caught by a police dog after a chase on the night of the raid and has already pleaded guilty to being involved.

Smith admitted that he knew Barcock, and that he had been in a car with him in Keswick a few days before the raid.

His barrister Greg Hoare asked him: “Were you with Mr Barcock that night at the garage in Newby Bridge?” “I wasn’t, no,” Smith replied.

Smith, has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated vehicle taking, affray, attempted theft and possessing oxyacetylene cutting equipment in connection with a crime.