A CARPENTER has been cleared by a jury at Worcester Crown Court of exposing himself twice near an Evesham school.

Four girls and a woman picked out William Jones on a police identity parade.

But Mr Jones, a married man of good character, insisted it was a case of mistaken identity.

At the end of the five-day trial, Mr Jones, aged 39, of St Patrick's Close, Evesham, was found not guilty of two counts of committing acts of gross indecency towards children.

Schoolgirls reported to staff that they saw a man undo his trousers and commit a sex act from an alleyway as they walked to school on May 28 last year.

The woman saw a man committing a similar offence near schoolchildren eight months earlier, as she looked out of her bedroom window.

The girls claimed the man was the same man they had seen in the driveway of the carpentry firm near the school and Mr Jones was subsequently arrested.

But Mr Jones maintained it was impossible for him to have been the man in the alley.

On one occasion, he had left work to take his wife to a hospital appointment and on the other he was travelling to a job at a hospital in Bromsgrove.