Bond he ain’t! Driver tries to shake off police with 007-style smokescreen
WHEN James Bond deployed a smokescreen from his Aston Martin in Goldfinger, he left his enemies choking in his wake.
For Simon Chaplin the trick didn’t work quite as well.
The 62-year-old farmhand had installed a smoke switch on his battered Peugeot and used it to try to shake off a chasing constable.
Instead the thick cloud of burning diesel meant the officer knew exactly where Chaplin’s car was – even from afar. After a five-mile pursuit PC Dafydd Campbell Birch arrested Chaplin when he pulled into a farmyard and was trapped.
A court heard yesterday that Chaplin had rigged up his device using a bucket of diesel, a pump and a pipe leading to the exhaust. In 007-style, it was powered by a dashboard switch, dripping diesel on to the hot exhaust pipe to produce clouds of smoke.
Mr Birch said he had tried to pull over Chaplin’s Peugeot because he thought it had a fake number plate. It said DE JURE – a Latin phrase meaning according to law.
Trying to escape, Chaplin triggered his secret weapon and sped off along a series of lanes near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire.
‘There was a vast amount of dense smoke coming out the back. It completely obscured the road,’ said PC Birch. ‘I had to slow down and keep a distance. I knew when he had turned left only by following the smoke he left behind.
‘At times I came to an almost complete stop. I had to look across the top of the hedgerows to see where he had gone. For a while I could not see the car but in the distance I could see the smoke going up a hill toward the village of Crundale. I caught up with him but the smoke kept coming thick and fast.’
When PC Birch finally cornered Chaplin, the farmhand got out of the Peugeot and hid what turned out to be a replica 9mm Beretta handgun behind a gatepost.
He was convicted at Swansea Crown Court of causing a danger to other road users but was cleared of possessing an imitation firearm in a public place.
He claimed he had been beaten up by police six days before the incident in January and feared it would happen again if he pulled over. He said he had been dragged out of his mechanical digger by officers in the earlier incident.
Chaplin, of Whitland, Carmarthen, told the court he had installed the smoke device to kill moles. He was bailed to be sentenced later. The judge, Recorder Elwen Evans QC, warned him he could be jailed.
‘Kept coming thick and fast’