The getaway girl who got away with it
Car thief’s driver spared jail
POSING behind the wheel of an open-topped Ferrari, this is the glamorous getaway girl who helped her boyfriend steal cars and valuables from affluent neighbourhoods.
Laura Smyth, 25, drove Lewis Leigh from his council estate home to wealthy areas nearby and then helped him escape with his haul.
She has now walked free from court despite a judge rejecting her account that she had been ‘coerced’ by her violent partner.
Smyth posted photographs of herself on Facebook showing her posing behind the wheel of expensive cars including a red soft-top Ferrari. Along with Leigh she was part of a network of crooks from the Wythenshawe area of Manchester who targeted houses and cars in affluent neighbourhoods nearby, a court heard.
In July last year she was the getaway driver as Leigh raided a house in Handforth while a family slept inside and stole a BMW, electrical items and a handbag. In October last year he teamed up with Smyth again for a burglary in Handforth where valuable gold jewellery was stolen. Later that month, Leigh and Smyth stole £2,000 worth of handbags and contents after using a glass hammer to gain entry to cars at Pure Gym in Handforth. Again, Smyth acted as driver with Leigh doing the stealing. The circumstances in which she found herself in the driver’s seat of a Ferrari are unknown. Both appeared at Manchester Crown Court after admitting burglary and theft charges. Leigh was jailed for three years and eight months, while Smyth was given two years, suspended for two years, with supervision requirements. Iain Johnstone, defending 29year- old Leigh, said his life had gone downhill after he began using cocaine through people Smyth was ‘associated with’. But the court heard that Leigh’s drug convictions went back to 2003 – years before he met Smyth. He has a conviction for assaulting Smyth and is banned from seeing her by a restraining order.
Smyth’s barrister told the court she had been subject to ‘violence and control’ from Leigh who had ‘coerced’ her into offending. The couple have since broken up.
But Judge Richard Mansell QC said: ‘I’ve no doubt the idea came from Leigh... I’ve no doubt he was a bad choice of partner, but you had a restraining order and took a choice to go back with him, and to commit these offences.’
However, he also told Smyth: ‘I accept you are otherwise a person of decent character from a decent family. You’ve got your life back on track. I would, by sending you to prison, be terminating all that.’