Thieves going ‘fishing’ through Huddersfield letterboxes

Jan 28 2010 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

FRESH warnings have been issued to householders after an alarming spate of ‘fishing trips’ by car thieves.

During the last week there have been at least seven incidents of raiders targeting Huddersfield houses for car keys.

In four of the incidents burglars used poles pushed through letter boxes to grab keys.

An Audi A3, a BMW 320, a Seat Leon, a Renault Clio, a Toyota Aygo, a Ford Ka and a Mitsubishi Colt have all been taken.

Now police have issued a desperate plea to householders to take action to protect their property from so-called ‘Hanoi’ burglaries – the description given to cases in which thieves burgle houses to steal the keys to prestige motors.

Det Con Russ Conlon, of Huddersfield CID, said: “Please ensure that all keys are hidden away and certainly not left in the vicinity of doors.

“Burglary is a very intrusive, personal crime, involving strangers being in your house and stealing your hard-earned property. These types of fishing trip-style offences depend on people’s lax attitude to security.

“If you want to adopt the ‘it won’t happen to me attitude,’ then make sure it doesn’t.”

Two of the incidents took place overnight last Thursday.

In the first, between 8pm on Thursday and 10am on Friday, thieves used an implement pushed through the letterbox of a house at Wentworth Street in Highfields to hook the keys from a table.

A BMW 320 with a ‘54’ registration plate was taken.

In the second incident, at some point between 11pm on Thursday night and 6.35am on Friday, a large pole was pushed through the letterbox to get hold of the keys to a house at Greystone in Crosland Hill.

The burglars then opened the door of the house and took keys to both an ‘08’ registration Audi A3 and an ‘08’ registered Seat Leon before driving off.

A day later, in the early hours of Saturday, thieves attempted the same tactics at a house at Coppice Drive in Netherton.