Alert neighours help to bring ‘plaster arm’ thief to book

Cheryl Elliott has had her faith in mankind restored after alert neighbours stood together to ensure that a blatant burglar was arrested.
Cheryl and husband, Mark, had left their Iris Street house to visit a patient at Dundee Hospital on the afternoon of November 21. “We were only gone about 30 minutes and when we returned at about 3pm, I noticed a white car passing us near our house but thought nothing of it.”
However, she then noticed the gate was not properly latched. The nasty truth was revealed when they saw that a back window had been smashed. Mark’s beloved flatscreen television was gone as was the DVD player and some of the chair covers. The thief had found the key to the security gate to make his departure, with his loot, easier than climbing through the broken window.

 

He appeared to be very calm even though his right arm was in plaster.

 
The family dog had been accidentally locked into another section of the house and could not scare off the intruder. Cheryl immediately ran across to her neighbours, the Chunders, to ask them if they had seen anyone in their garden.
“Thankfully they have a CCTV camera facing the street and we were able to roll back the frames until we saw a man driving up to the house, getting into the garden and later emerging with our stuff. He appeared to be very calm even though his right arm was in plaster.”
The police were contacted and while Cheryl and Mark cleaned up the muddy mess in their house left by the thief’s boots and the glass replaced, a breakthrough was made on Sunday morning.
Alert neighbour to the rescue
Again, Cheryl said it was thanks to the alert Shaiel Chunder, who while driving on Union Street, at about 9am when he spotted a white car parked at the side of the road and a plaster covered arm, with fingers holding a cigarette, protruding from the window. “He called me and the police. By the time I got there, the police were swarming around. They found our flatscreen in his car along with computer equipment and other stuff. Our DVD player had been already sold. There was even a gun, which was believed to have been stolen. He did not deny anything. When I berated him he just said ‘sorry, m’am.'”

“We have to take care of each other in our small town. It is only way to survive.”

 

Police believe the plaster on the arm was just to make it easier for him to break the glass.
The suspect was also linked to a jewellery theft in Glencoe.
“The police took him to Newcastle as it was said he had fenced a lot of stolen stuff there. Ironically, he was parked on Union Street as he had run out of petrol. It is also thought that he had been living out of his car.”
Cheryl said without caring neighbours, the thief would have never been apprehended. “We have to take care of each other in our small town. It is only way to survive.”