Stabbed burglar caught on prowl – just 31 hours earlier
THE serial burglar who was killed after breaking into a pensioner’s home was caught snooping around the grounds of another house 31 hours earlier.
Henry Vincent was spotted on CCTV sneaking across the pebbled driveway of a £1.5million property while his accomplice waited in a white van.
The career criminal was confronted by the homeowner who said he appeared to be ‘scanning the house from side to side’.
Vincent, 37, then walked down the side of the house where another security camera captured him acting in a ‘very shifty’ manner.
The following night he was fatally stabbed after breaking into Richard Osborn-Brooks’s home in Hither Green, south-east London.
Vincent threatened Mr OsbornBrooks, 78, with a screwdriver after disturbing the pensioner and his wife Maureen, 76, in their bed.
He forced him downstairs as an accomplice ransacked a bedroom, but during a struggle Vincent was stabbed. Mr Osborn-Brooks, a retired RAC office manager, was arrested on suspicion of murder before being told on Friday that he would not face charges.
The pensioner and his wife have not been back to their £500,000 home since the incident and may never been able to return because of fears of a vendetta against them, police have told their neighbours. The house has been boarded up.
The CCTV footage of Vincent ‘casing’ the previous house in the village of Farningham in Kent has been handed to detectives.
The homeowner, a 34-year- old business analyst, was inside with his wife and four children when Vincent arrived at 5.15pm on Easter Monday.
‘This individual had a real menacing air about him,’ he said. ‘My wife and I knew straight away that he was trouble and was out to rob a house. It was obvious he was casing the house.’
The homeowner, who asked to remain anonymous, said he confronted Vincent after spotting him on CCTV. ‘ He was scanning the house side to side and seemed suspicious,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘When I opened the door he wouldn’t make eye contact and kept looking around.
‘Then he spotted some green plastic ties that had been cut off slabs we’d had delivered. He asked if he could have those.’
To avoid a confrontation, the homeowner allowed Vincent to take some of the ties, which he claimed he wanted to attach a shed he had just obtained to his van. He added: ‘I watched him on the cameras again and I could see he was now scanning the side of the house. I then went out with the dog and he saw me watching him.’
The homeowner added: ‘As soon as he and his friend drove off my wife rang 101 and reported him. I wanted to make sure they had gone so I took the dog out for a walk and while I was walking in a field nearby I saw them stop near some building supplies in the garden of a house and then have a good look before driving off again.’
Vincent, a father-of-four, is suspected of stealing valuables from retired engineer Cyril Goodearl, 78, who also lives in Farningham, last November. Vincent was part of a large family describing themselves as travellers.