Bedford Driving Lessons

For eight months it was a suburban mystery. A series of car owners in a leafy enclave awoke to find their brake cables had been severed overnight. One baffled driver in West Wickham, Kent, found two cars on his driveway had been targeted in one swipe. The police were called and the finger of suspicion fell on a dangerous villain who for unknown reasons was swooping under cover of dark and putting lives at risk. But after a lengthy investigation, forensic testing and CCTV surveillance, police discovered they had been outfoxed – by a fox. A single four-legged felon with a bushy tail and a taste for brake fluid is thought to have been the culprit. The mystery of the West Wickham cable cutter began in February when a motorist reported that his brake cable had been cut. Over the next seven months, the phantom vandal struck eight more times – indiscriminately hitting three Mercedes, a BMW, three Fords, a Nissan and an Austin. The crime spree escalated from August onwards. At first, police in Bromley, Kent, thought a two-legged villain was behind the ‘criminal damage’ and they submitted the severed cables for forensic testing. When no fingerprints were found, they were baffled and set about checking CCTV cameras in the area to see whether they could identify any repeat overnight visitor. Then, as suspicion grew that their culprit may not, after all, be from the criminal world, police sent the evidence to an expert in biological science at Bristol University. He knew within seconds that the cable cutter was a fox. More