A group of students were left astonished after finding their locked front door hanging off its hinges after being burgled. The house of seven returned from a night out at 3am to discover their front door almost removed. Second year Civil Engineering student Navide Apicella told LS: “when I saw the front door and all the damage, I sobered up immediately!”
The theft took place between 12am and 3am on Oct 11. Three of the seven bedrooms were broken into, despite all of them being secured with a lock. The police officer on the scene said that it appeared the doors had been kicked down. The intruders stole two Apple Macbook Pros, a Samsung laptop, a Canon SLR camera and an iPod.
Third year Mechanical Engineering student, Matt Dryden said: “we got off quite lightly considering. I think the locked doors probably slowed them down.”
He added: “It’s annoying because you read about houses left unlocked, or windows left open and we did pretty much everything we could to try and prevent being burgled, but it still happened to us.”
Third year Civil Engineering student, John Donnellan was the first to return home and contacted the police immediately. “The police were excellent and arrived within half an hour. I was in a state of disbelief. I know burglaries are fairly common but I never thought it would happen to me.”
The suspects are believed to be two Asian males that the group saw observing their house. Apicella told this paper: “I saw two dodgy looking guys who were sitting on the wall watching us leave. We all went back into the house to hide some valuables in the living room and double check that we had locked all of our doors. We also left a few lights on around the house.”
The group spotted the same males close to their house, on Norwood Grove, the following night. They informed nearby patrolling police who sent the surveillance camera car to video them. So far no arrests have been made.
A police spokesman said: “obviously there is no way to really stop a determined thief from breaking in, but we’d encourage students to look for quality doors locks and burglar alarms that meet UNIPOL code of standards.”
Carina Derhalli
Photo: Navide Apicella