JURORS in the Monks Cross “hoodies” robbery trial were today deciding whether a caravan resident mugged a young woman on her way to work.

Richard Smith, 33, claimed he was asleep beside his brother in one of their family’s caravans at Monks Cross when Natalie Reeson was robbed by two men wearing hoodies over their faces.

While giving evidence at York Crown Court, he denied being the robber who punched Miss Reeson three times in the face and then ran off across a field with an accomplice and £30 of her cash at about 6.30am on January 18 last year.

His brother, Thomas, said they shared a bed and that Smith, 33, was asleep from 9pm on January 17 to 10am on January 18.

When he got up at 7am to let his dog out, his brother Richard was sleeping beside him, Mr Smith alleged, and denied prosecution suggestions he was lying to protect his brother. Smith, who was living in a caravan parked on Barr Lane, Stockton-on-the-Forest, when he was arrested on February 5, has since given his address as Outgang Lane Caravan Site. He denies robbery.

His barrister Nicholas Barker, in his closing speech, claimed the prosecution case was weak because it rested almost entirely on Miss Reeson’s identification of Richard Smith in an identity parade.

The robbery had taken place before dawn on a street where the only lighting came from a nearby garage, he said.

She had only seen the man who punched her for a short time when she was part of an “alarming and highly distressing” incident and he was wearing a hood over his face.

She could have made an honest mistake when she picked Richard Smith out in the ID parade and had made a mistake in a second ID parade involving a second suspect, he said.