Nightclub girl bagged my £22k Range Rover
Hunt for woman who snatched keys on dancefloor
‘I’ve had the locks changed now’
HAVING her handbag stolen on a night out was bad enough.
But worse was to come for Louisa Stevens, 41, when the thieves found it contained the keys to her Range Rover, along with her driving licence.
CCTV footage from outside Miss Stevens’ house shows a taxi pull up shortly after the bag theft.
A blonde woman – dressed in heels and a black dress – gets out of the taxi, unlocks the 4x4 and drives away in it. Her friends can be seen sitting in the back of the waiting cab eating takeaways.
The car was later found dumped outside a garage, and Miss Stevens has now released the CCTV footage in the hope of tracking the thief down.
Miss Stevens, a beautician, said yesterday: ‘I came back from my holiday and met up with a few friends. A short night turned into a long night.’
The mother-of-one noticed her Radley handbag was missing after she hung it up on a peg near where she was dancing in a nightclub in Bury, Greater Manchester, during the early hours of last Saturday.
The bag was later found outside a takeaway, but her black Radley purse, mobile phone, car keys and house keys were missing.
She returned home and got into the house with a spare key – but was shocked to find her white Range Rover Evoque missing.
‘I watched the CCTV footage next morning,’ she said. ‘It was four or five girls. It is just one that gets in the car and drives off.
‘When I watched the footage I felt really numb. It only hit me yesto terday, it was delayed shock. I have not been sleeping.
‘To pinch my handbag is bad enough, but to have the cheek to steal my car as well – that’s really shocking.’
The footage shows the woman pull up in a taxi outside Miss Stevens’ house. It is assumed the woman must have found the address in the beautician’s ID documents. She gets out of the taxi and walks to the Range Rover on the driveway. She gets inside for a few minutes and then returns get a friend. Both get into the vehicle, while the taxi drives off.
One woman runs back after the taxi, while the first woman in the black dress and heels drives away in the Range Rover.
The car – which cost £22,750 two years ago – was traced after a man in nearby Radcliffe reported it was blocking his garage door. Miss Stevens is particularly worried about a case that was in the back which contained an important assignment.
‘The police say they’re still carrying out forensic work on the car so I haven’t been able to go near it yet,’ she said. ‘I was too terrified to sleep the next night because they’d taken my house keys too, but I’ve had the locks changed now.
‘I’m also really upset that they took my phone which had all my photos of a brilliant holiday on it.’
Chief Inspector Phil Spurgeon, from Greater Manchester Police, said: ‘This CCTV has been widely shared on social media and we’d like to hear from anyone who has any information about the women who feature in it.
‘We’d also like to hear from the taxi driver involved.’