Scottish police searching for thieves who stole four caravans
The Lunar Lexon is one of four different caravans stolen recently in Scotland
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Tuesday, 27, Mar 2012 03:37
by Tom Lowenstein
Police in Scotland are on the hunt for a gang of caravan thieves they believe are behind four stolen vehicles, after two more vanished this weekend.
Caravans worth a total of £18,000 were taken between February 28th and Sunday March 18th with no clue as to where they are now.
The only lead so far is a white Ford Transit that was caught on CCTV near the scene of the first crime.
Police investigating the crimes believe that they may have been stolen to order or broken down to sell for parts, the Perthshire Advertiser reported.
The first theft occurred overnight at a Kinross industrial estate unit on Tuesday February 28th. The model in question was a red and cream Lunar Lexon valued at £6,000.
Then, sometime before March 10th a second caravan - a 2004 Elddis Odyssey - was stolen from a farm in Burrelton, between Perth and Dundee.
The news comes after police in Suffolk appealed for help catching thieves who stole a family's Bailey Pageant caravan from an industrial unit in Newmarket.
"Caravans are an unusual thing to steal because they are so big and you'd have to be pretty brazen," a police spokesman told the newspaper.
"And now that it's coming into caravan season, there's probably more of a market for them."
The most recent thefts occurred on Sunday March 18th, with the culprits entering a shed at Westwood Darm in Bankfoot to hitch up and make off with a Hobby 650 Prestige tourer worth around £5,500.
A registration plate belonging to the van was uncovered at the scene, suggesting that thieves may have replaced it with fake plates to make their getaway.
"The owner is a 50-year-old farmer and his family, and they didn't hear a thing overnight or on the Monday morning, but the shed was an outbuilding a fair distance away from the main residence," the spokesman said.
While the family discovered their caravan was gone first thing on Monday morning, just quarter of an hour earlier a woman in nearby Balcairn had realised her Mardon Mystique had vanished.
Worth around £2,500, the brown and white 'van had been parked near an outbuilding and at around 3am that morning the 46-year-old's dogs had been disturbed but she had not got up to check why.
Anyone with any information is asked to call Tayside Police on 0300 111 2222 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.