Couple return home to find burglars ransacking flat
Police hunt woman and two men who fled with only a watch
PUBLISHED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 4:08pm
UPDATED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 5:09pm
Clifford Lo [email protected]
Police in Central are investigating the raid on a Pottinger Street apartment where the residents disturbed the robbers. Photo: Oliver Tsang
Two burglars managed to escape with only a watch after they were disturbed when a couple returned unexpectedly to their apartment in Central early today.
Police say the tenant and his wife found a woman guarding the first-floor staircase of Wah Hing House on Pottinger Street when they returned home about 2.15am.
“Upon seeing the return of the couple, [the lookout] immediately shouted in an apparent move to signal to her partners upstairs,” a police officer said. The couple ignored the woman and went upstairs.
“After entering their fifth-floor flat, the couple found two male burglars were ransacking the living room,” the officer said. “They tried to stop the two raiders from escaping but failed.”
The burglars ran out of the flat with the watch, valued at about HK$38,000, and fled downstairs. The male tenant gave chase and saw one of the men jump into a taxi to escape. The couple was uninjured in the incident.
Officers are looking for the three Chinese – two men and one woman. The woman, who was wearing a black shirt and a green skirt at the time, is thought to be aged about 30 and is about 1.75 metres tall with a thin build. The two men are aged between 30 and 40 are about 1.7 metres tall.
Police mounted a search, but no arrests were made.
Officers seized a crowbar and a torch in a recycling bag that the burglars left behind on the staircases of the building.
According to police, prising marks were also found at the front door of an unattended flat on the fifth floor of the building. Police are trying to contact its tenants to check whether any valuables were stolen.
Crime-squad officers from Central police are investigating.
In a separate incident, a restaurant at Butterfly Estate in Tuen Mun was burgled and HK$20,000 in cash was stolen together with the hard disk of the closed-circuit TV system. The break-in was discovered when an employee arrived for work at about 4.30am today.
The number of burglaries reported in Hong Kong has decreased since 2010.
Police figures showed burglary reports fell 15 per cent to 3,573 last year from 4,214 in 2012. There were 4,382 reported burglaries in 2011 and 4,543 in 2010.
