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I chased a thief out of our kitchen tonight.
I was sitting in the front room typing on our shiny new laptop just after 10 pm when I heard a funny noise from the kitchen. At first I assumed it was a cat (ours or someone else's) - this would hardly be unusual! But it sounded odd so I went to look and found a stranger in the kitchen. Young, white, wearing a white tracksuit top1. I yelled at him and he legged it out of the back door, around onto the drive and out onto the street. I saw him disappear around the corner but it was dark, wet, I was wearing socks and I'd tripped over something on the drive. Common sense reasserted itself and I gave up!
Turns out the thing I stubbed my toe on in the drive was his push-bike, which I (perhaps stupidly) carted back into the kitchen and locked the door. Janet and Anna had been upstairs but Janet was pretty shocked when I told her and immediately rang the police. An officer came around within 10 minutes, during which time we tried to work out what if anything was missing. Finally Janet spotted that my work briefcase was gone - and I'd seen him holding some sort of bag as he exited our drive. As far as we can tell that's all he got. In the grand scheme of things it could have been a lot worse - we're often both upstairs, and all sorts of kit including the laptop would have been lying around.
All told it was over in about 15 seconds but it's still really annoying and fairly shocking. The police took my statement, took the bike to fingerprint and tomorrow they come to do more forensics and take my prints for reference. I did get a look at the thief and said I'm prepared to ID him, but whether I could actually pick his picture out in practice is another matter. The police officer was incredibly professional and supportive and I can't speak highly enough of the initial support we've had.
Needless to say we'll be making sure to lock the back door in the future, even if we're in and up and about. It's more the principle of the thing - to have an intruder in your home, to think what might have happened, and worry he might come back. Fortunately he can't have seen much so won't know what's in the house to steal and hopefully there's no incentive for him to come back. Thieves are complete bastards, really.
--
1Shops at Chavs R Us, basically.
I was sitting in the front room typing on our shiny new laptop just after 10 pm when I heard a funny noise from the kitchen. At first I assumed it was a cat (ours or someone else's) - this would hardly be unusual! But it sounded odd so I went to look and found a stranger in the kitchen. Young, white, wearing a white tracksuit top1. I yelled at him and he legged it out of the back door, around onto the drive and out onto the street. I saw him disappear around the corner but it was dark, wet, I was wearing socks and I'd tripped over something on the drive. Common sense reasserted itself and I gave up!
Turns out the thing I stubbed my toe on in the drive was his push-bike, which I (perhaps stupidly) carted back into the kitchen and locked the door. Janet and Anna had been upstairs but Janet was pretty shocked when I told her and immediately rang the police. An officer came around within 10 minutes, during which time we tried to work out what if anything was missing. Finally Janet spotted that my work briefcase was gone - and I'd seen him holding some sort of bag as he exited our drive. As far as we can tell that's all he got. In the grand scheme of things it could have been a lot worse - we're often both upstairs, and all sorts of kit including the laptop would have been lying around.
All told it was over in about 15 seconds but it's still really annoying and fairly shocking. The police took my statement, took the bike to fingerprint and tomorrow they come to do more forensics and take my prints for reference. I did get a look at the thief and said I'm prepared to ID him, but whether I could actually pick his picture out in practice is another matter. The police officer was incredibly professional and supportive and I can't speak highly enough of the initial support we've had.
Needless to say we'll be making sure to lock the back door in the future, even if we're in and up and about. It's more the principle of the thing - to have an intruder in your home, to think what might have happened, and worry he might come back. Fortunately he can't have seen much so won't know what's in the house to steal and hopefully there's no incentive for him to come back. Thieves are complete bastards, really.
--
1Shops at Chavs R Us, basically.
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