Burglar asleep in bed!
Saturday 4th October 2008
I love a wedding. It's a great excuse to have a knees-up with family and friends. So I was chuffed when my sister, Jacqui, 35, married Lester Roby, 36, at Portsmouth Register Office on 19 July this year.The wedding was a real family affair, and the next day, my partner, John, 35, our kids, Kurtis, then 12, and Chloe, 10, and I met up with Jacqui and Lester again for lunch at the Golden Hind pub in Portsmouth.
My mum, Margaret Turner, 57, was there with her partner, Peter White, plus my cousin, David McLaughlin, and his parents, my Aunty Liz and Uncle Billy. By 8.30pm, we'd all headed to Mum's for more drink and chat. She lived 10 doors away, so when Kurtis and Chloe began yawning around 11pm, I got up to leave.
'See you in a bit, love,' John said.
Heading home, we were almost there, when Chloe piped up: 'Look Mum, the bedroom light's on.'
'Who forgot to turn it off?' I tutted.
Not thinking any more of it, I led the kids into the house.
'Right, grab yourselves a drink, then it's off to bed,' I said firmly.
'Er… Mum,' Chloe said, as she switched on the kitchen light. 'Why is there glass all over the floor?'
Glancing round, I saw shards of glass on the lino.
'Oh no!' I gasped, heart racing. 'We've been burgled!'
Not for the first time. Four years earlier, the house had been ransacked.
'Right, back to Granny's,'
I said, quickly ushering the kids outside.
But poor Chloe was worried about the guinea pigs, Fudge, Toffee and Jet, who lived in a hutch on the landing.
'What if they're hurt?' she fretted as we hurried back towards Mum's.
'They'll be fine,' I insisted.
But would they be? I had no idea. Arriving at Mum's, no one could believe the news.
'That's awful,' Aunty Liz gasped. She agreed to look after the kids while Mum, John, David and Jacqui came back to the house with me. When I opened the front door, they went into the kitchen, while I headed upstairs to check on the guinea pigs.
'Thank goodness you're OK,' I sighed when I saw them safely running round their hutch. 'Let's look at the rest of the damage.'
Peeking into mine and John's bedroom, I gasped. My clothes were strewn all over the room. The bedside cabinets had been ransacked, boxes torn open…Chaos. Gulping back tears, I couldn't even begin to focus on what was missing. Then I had a thought. Kurtis's room.
Last time we'd been burgled, they'd taken his beloved computer and games. I'd bought him a new Xbox for Christmas. Please let it be there, I willed, as I headed up to his attic room.
But even before I reached the top, I saw his telly and Xbox were gone. Poor Kurtis. He'd be heartbroken. I was just about to head down, when I spotted something odd.
Chloe had been sleeping on a mattress beside Kurtis's bed while David stayed in her room
for the wedding. Only now, snoozing on top of her pink duvet, was a huge bloke.The burglar!
I couldn't see his face, but he was wearing one of Kurtis's woolly hats. Heart hammering, I screamed.
'There's someone still in the house!' I yelled.
Not even daring to see if my screams had woken our visitor, I ran downstairs and grabbed the phone from Jacqui, who was dialling 999.
'The burglar's still here!' I gabbled frantically. 'Please come quickly!'
The police were there in minutes, but it felt like a lifetime as I stayed on the phone and John and David waited at the bottom of the stairs leading to Kurtis's room.
Finally, three police officers bundled into the house, and when I told them where the burglar was, they headed straight upstairs.Numb with shock, I stood outside the house with Jacqui, while Mum went to see what was going on.
'I can't believe it,' I kept saying.
'He was asleep in the bed.'
'Sounds like they're having trouble waking him,' Mum said as she joined us. 'I could hear them slapping his face, trying to get a response.'
I was worried about the kids, so I decided to check on them while Mum and Jacqui stayed at the house.
After 25 minutes, I came back to the house to give a statement, just in time to see the police car drive off with our dozy burglar inside.
'I've never seen anything like it,' one police officer said. 'It was like something out of Goldilocks.'
'Thank heavens we caught him,' I said. 'Imagine if I'd sent the kids straight up to bed first?'
'You won't believe what we found down the burglar's trousers,' the officer went on. 'A moneybox. We wondered what was going on when we turned him over and there was
a clinking sound.'
That moneybox belonged to Kurtis. He'd saved up £120 for a family holiday in Cyprus.
I couldn't bear to go back to the house that night, so we stayed at Jacqui's nearby instead.
'At least the burglar didn't get away with all my stuff this time,' Kurtis said. 'That's something.'
It was. Fortunately, although he'd stuffed Kurtis's Xbox and telly into a bag, because he'd fallen asleep, he'd left it in the house. A month later, on 22 August 2008, Tommy Gill, 27, admitted two counts of burglary and a third charge of burglary relating to a separate incident a month earlier, at Portsmouth Magistrates Court. Turned out he'd taken 15 Valium tablets, which is why he fell asleep. He was jailed for two years. I can't say I'm sorry. After what he put us through, our Goldilocks burglar deserves to be locked up. At least our tale had
a happy ending.