DAYLIGHT DOGNAPPER
Teen caught on security camera footage stealing spaniel... but she still refuses to say where pet is
AFTER James Daniel arrived home to find his daughter’s cocker spaniel puppy missing, he examined footage from his security cameras.
On seeing what happened in his back garden, he could not believe his eyes.
The clip shows his neighbours’ daughter Shannagh Cookson, 19, scaling his fence and seeming to check the coast was clear.
The student then jumps into Mr Daniel’s garden and snatches three-month-old pet Penny, before climbing back over the fence and leaving across a public green.
With his eight-year-old daughter heartbroken by the loss of Penny – who cost the family £600 – Mr Daniel confronted Cookson’s parents over the daylight ‘dognapping’. But Cookson claimed she had given the puppy to a friend because it had been ill-treated, something he strongly denies.
Cookson has admitted theft but refused to reveal Penny’s whereabouts. It comes as dog owners face a theft epidemic, with an average of five pets taken every day.
Mr Daniel said after the case: ‘I’m so angry that a person who I know just took something that isn’t hers.’
Penny was in a dog carrier in the back garden of Mr Daniel’s home in the Bradford area of Manchester with another spaniel, Molly, on September 30, when the taxi driver went to the supermarket, a court heard.
On returning and realising Penny had gone, Mr Daniel showed the CCTV film to Cookson’s mother. He said she begged him to ring her daughter’s mobile phone and ask her to return the dog.
‘I bluntly told her that, as a matter of principle, I would… hand over the mobile phone number to the police, which I did,’ he said. The CCTV footage was played at Manchester magistrates’ court, where Cookson was ordered to pay £600 compensation and to complete a 12month community order.
A Freedom of Information request by pet insurer Direct Line found 1,959 dogs were reported stolen in the UK last year, 30 per cent up on 2014.