Police appeal after burglary suspect is caught on camera
When a home security system was stolen from a Queenstown house, the person responsible may have thought they had made a clean getaway.
But police have recovered footage from the camera, and are now appealing for help identifying a suspect.
Sergeant Steve Watt, of Queenstown, said police received a report of a burglary at a house in London Ln, Queenstown on Thursday.
Friends of the owners, who were looking after the house while the owners were overseas, discovered the back door had been jimmied open when checking on the house.
When police watched footage recorded by a home security system, they saw what appeared to be a man stealing the camera after realising he was being filmed, Watt said. However, the images were backed up by a web-based system.
Watt said a hole was drilled into a safe at the house, but at this stage it was not known what, if anything, was taken from it.
As well as the camera, a Bose stereo system and other expensive household items were missing from the house.
One of the photographs that was recovered was time-stamped 2pm on December 28, Watt said.
Watt believed the house may have been entered several times since then.
The man in the footage, described as being of medium build with brown hair and eyes, rough-looking facial hair and aged in his mid-20s, was wearing a full black outfit and gloves.
Watt said burglary was not a common crime in Queenstown.
‘‘It’s something we are very fortunate not to have a regular occurrence of.’’
There had been no other reports of burglary in the area.
Police inquiries were continuing and anyone who could identify the man, or who had seen anything suspicious in the London Ln area from late December, was urged to contact police.