A BMW driver who sped away from a police officer who’d asked him to hand over his car keys walked from court.

Matthew Donnelly, 22, had dismissed PC Jamie Gosling’s request for the key to his BMW 1 series by telling the officer ‘it’s keyless, you p****’.

He was found guilty by jurors at Oxford Crown Court last month of assaulting an emergency worker in a trial that lasted barely three-and-a-half hours. Donnelly did not give evidence in his own defence.

On Monday, Judge Michael Gledhill QC imposed a 12 month community order with 100 hours of unpaid work and ordered the warehouse worker pay £500 compensation to PC Gosling.

During the trial, the court was told that officers began following Donnelly’s BMW in Wantage town centre on December 11, thinking it was being driven erratically.

They tailed it into The Wharf, a dead end, where the defendant turned around his hatchback.

Mr Gosling went to speak to the driver, telling jurors he’d asked Donnelly to turn the engine off but the instruction had been ignored.

“I leant through the window. It’s at that point I realised, and he’s also confirmed, the car was keyless,” he said.

Donnelly said words to the effect of ‘it’s keyless, you p****,’ the officer claimed. He described the driver’s voice as ‘quite arrogant’.

Mr Gosling switched on his body-worn video camera, capturing the BMW speeding back down the one-way street.

The defendant, of Leamington Drive, Faringdon, denied the allegations but did not give evidence in his own defence.

Following his conviction, the jury was told that Donnelly was given a nine month suspended prison sentence last year for dealing cannabis.

When police caught up with him in December 2020 they found a cannabis grinder in the car together with beer cans, prosecutor Joe Davidson said last month.

Matthew Donnelly outside Oxford Crown Court

Matthew Donnelly outside Oxford Crown Court

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