Ashford: Fake cop gets hit by a car, swings a knife, then gets naked

A drunken ex-soldier crashed his car into a wooden fence, brandished a knife while posing as a police officer, and then got naked.

David Saunders, 37, nearly hit a family as he drove into a high-speed traffic island in Ashford, Kent. He told them: ‘The fence is in my way.’

As a witness called 999, he tried to get his phone and claimed that he was an undercover cop.

When pedestrian Terry Stuart – also nearly hit by a bullet – asked to see his identification, Saunders pulled a handcuff off his wrecked Vauxhall Astra, then held out a knife a kitchen.

He threatened to attack, swinging a ‘medium size’ blade erratically as witnesses fled the scene at around 3am on November 20.

The real police then cornered him in a car park, where he ‘undressed for the last time to be completely naked’.

Richard Mandel, the prosecutor, told Canterbury Crown Court, was forced to pepper him with pepper spray due to his ‘aggressive’ behaviour.

After throwing the knife into a bush, he was taken to nearby William Harvey Hospital but refused to take a breath sample and told police ‘no comment’.

He showed viewers his handcuffs to ‘prove’ he was a police officer – but later admitted he had brought them ‘to create prank TikTok videos’.

The worker was jailed for 18 months at Canterbury Crown Court after pleading guilty to dangerous driving, threatening others with a blade, posing as a police officer and failing to produce a specimen.

He currently has 25 convictions for 41 counts, many for violence or use of an offensive weapon, the court heard.

Saunders blamed an unidentified passenger seen leaving the scene of the crash for his actions that day.

Sarah Selby, the palliative, said a passenger convinced him to drive to the emergency room after he drank four cans of beer and took prescribed painkillers.

Saunders battled alcoholism after being bullied at school and his drinking worsened when he was wrongfully discharged from the military and subjected to bereavement, the court heard.