A mum had her festive spirit restored after a kind stranger gave her a Coca-Cola truck after thieves stole her beloved bus.

Zoe Murphy shelled out almost £1,000 in order to build the replica truck with her bare hands in a bid to win the title of the UK’s biggest Christmas lights display.

The 40-year-old spent almost three years swapping Christmas decorations with people across the globe, and on November 27 she set about preparing for her annual display on her mum’s lawn.

This year, the handmade truck was all set to be the centerpiece of the dazzling light show in Gillingham, Kent- Until it was stolen by a pair of masked raiders just two weeks later.

CCTV footage captured two vehicles driving down the road multiple times at 7.45pm before one figure ran out and tried to grab the Coca-Cola van.

But due to the thickness of the truck’s heavy wooden frame the thief was not able to pick it up.

After being joined by an accomplice the two men instead started kicking the side of the truck until they were able to rip the cab out from beneath it.

During the time of the robbery Zoe was out with her mother having dinner  ‘just a couple of roads away’, and the pair were devastated to return home to find part of the prized truck was missing.

Thieves destroyed a Gillingham mum’s homemade coca-cola truck and stole the wooden cab(Picture: SWNS)

The theft left Zoe’s mum traumatised, and she now compulsively looks out of the window wondering if the crooks are going to return.

Zoe said: ‘Every night she normally goes and chats to everyone that goes past and to the neighbours, and I asked her if she’d been doing that recently and she said no, she hasn’t.

‘It was my mum’s birthday and we literally popped out to treat her to dinner, we were only gone for about two hours and it happened then.

‘We’ve got them on camera, two cars went up and down the road and they stopped outside a neighbour’s house – two of them got out, opened the back of their van and went up to the Coca-Cola truck and tried shaking it.’

The truck was also being used by the mum to help raise money for child cancer charity My Shining Star.

She added: “We reached £500 yesterday in the charity pot and we were sitting there celebrating.

‘I was buzzing because that’s a lot more than we raised last year by this point, it’s only been nine days, but then we came home and my mum just burst out crying.

‘When we put the truck out there we sat my son down and told him we were raising money for poorly children, we explained to him what we were doing and he understood and even told everyone at school that his toys were in the display so all the kids could come and have a look.

‘You just don’t expect it. Last night I was in shock and I was still awake at 3am because I was so angry.’

A Good Samaritan later got in touch with the family and donated new truck cabin (Picture: SWNS)

After the police were called Zoe took to the local Facebook group to hunt for security footage, and soon discovered her fellow neighbours had also fallen victim to the masked thieves.

But whilst police are still searching for the culplrits, the family got some Christmas cheer when a white van was generously donated as a replacement.

By the evening, the family believe they will have the Coca-Cola van back up and glowing, after they have spray painted the new cab red.

Zoe added: ‘Someone has anonymously messaged us, and said they have a truck exactly the same as the one that was stolen, but it’s white – would we want it to be donated?

‘My mum said no at first because she was worried about it getting stolen again, and she wouldn’t want to have someone else’s property getting taken.

‘But we spoke to them and they said whatever happens, happens.

‘They’re dropping it off this afternoon – we’ve gone and brought some red spray paint, so we’ll spray the new cab red and hopefully it will all be back up by the end of the afternoon.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

A generous stranger stepped in and offered to donate a new truck to replace the stolen cabin.