Couple of wallies
Bungling thieves dig 3ft hole between shops but set alarm off when they hit a telly on wall
A SHOP owner discovered bungling thieves had dug a 3ft hole through his wall in a failed robbery bid.
Two men chiselled into TN McKay in Dumfries by knocking through an 18-inch thick wall from the property next door.
But they triggered the security alarm when they tried to push over a TV wall stand that was in their way.
Owner Callum McKay, 61, said: “It’s shocking. Never for a second did I think this would happen. It was like something out of a movie.
“My dad said it looked like an attack on a London bullion vault.”
The alarm was triggered at around 2am on Tuesday.
Callum, whose family have owned the business since 1981, rushed down to the shop to check all was OK and found nothing untoward.
It wasn’t until the following morning he saw flecks of paint lying on the floor, prompting him to investigate.
He said: “Everything looked fine at first and there was no sign anyone had been in the shop, so I thought a passer-by or a car must have triggered the alarm.
“The next day I happened to notice some bits of paint on the floor. At first I thought it had fallen from the ceiling but it bugged me a bit so I started to have a look around.
“I don’t know what made me but I happened to go outside to have a look in the window of the shop next door.
“It’s been sitting empty for years and is an eyesore but I could see through the mess slightly. I noticed a massive hole in the wall and realised it backed on to the area I had saw the paint.”
It was then Callum realised something wasn’t right and decided to investigate.
He found a scene reminiscent of the Hatton Garden jewellery robbery or heist movie Sexy
Beast. He added: “I took the TV off the wall and saw the hole. It was huge.
“The bricks crumbled and the rubble was everywhere. They must have been disturbed when they tried to get the stand off to get into the shop.”
Callum said the hole was big enough to fit one of his 40in TVs through.
He added: “If they had got in successfully they could have got off with a few thousands pounds worth of stock. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Callum said a nearby business’s CCTV footage showed two men fleeing the shop next door after the alarm was set off.
A spokesman for Police Scotland said: “We received a report of an attempted break-in at a property on English Street, Dumfries, around 9.25am on Tuesday, October 6.
“Enquiries are ongoing.”