This is the moment a bungling thief got stuck climbing through the ceiling of a supermarket in an attempt to steal scratchcards.
Staff at a Sainsbury’s Local in Nottingham frantically called 999 after they saw a pair of legs dangling from a hole in the store ceiling just after 6am yesterday morning.
The Mission Impossible-style burglary was captured in shocking CCTV footage shared by Nottinghamshire Police.
The man can be seen smashing his way through the ceiling of the store on Waverley Street, Radford, in a cloud of plaster and dust.
But then as he lowers himself down to the waist, he becomes stuck, and starts kicking his legs in a panicked attempt to steady himself.
Groceries were sent flying off a shelf nearby with the raider comically left dangling for a few seconds.
He eventually managed to free himself and allegedly went on to steal around £200 worth of National Lottery scratchcards.
The man also placed crisps, washing detergents and food products into a bag before fleeing the store via a fire exit, police have said.
This is the moment a bungling thief got stuck climbing through the ceiling of a supermarket in an attempt to steal scratchcards
The man eventually managed to free himself and allegedly stole around £200 worth of scratchcards
The man also placed crisps, washing detergents and food products into a bag before fleeing the store via a fire exit, police have said
Response officers arrived within six minutes of the 999 call and found a man matching the intruder’s description in nearby Forest Road.
A 50-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of burglary and taken into custody.
Inspector Liz Gaskin, of the City Central neighbourhood policing team, said: ‘This was fantastic work by the Response officers who ensured a suspect was swiftly in handcuffs.
‘The store was closed at the time of the incident and so did not impact on members of the public.
‘However it was an alarming incident for the staff and I’d like to thank them for alerting us to the burglary.
‘No one should arrive for a shift to discover a burglar inside their place of work and I hope they are reassured by the arrest.
‘As shown today, we will always offer a robust response when community stores are targeted like this and their shelves ransacked.’
It comes as MailOnline reported last month that shoplifting offences have surged to a record high.
There were a total of 492,914 offences recorded by police in the year to September, the Office of National Statistics found – the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003.
MailOnline recently obtained CCTV footage from shop owners in Surrey that reveals brazen thieves casually stealing hundreds of pounds worth of stock before fleeing with full bags.
Lindsey Kleinlercher, joint owner of gift shop Between The Lines, said shoplifting is now ‘blatant’ across the store’s 18 locations in the south of England – as she hit out at the lack of support from police.
Police recorded 1.8 million theft offences in the year to September, a two per cent increase driven by shoplifting and a 22 per cent rise in crimes involving theft from a person (146,109). Knife offences and robberies rose by four per cent each.
It comes amid warnings that shoplifting is ‘spiralling out of control’ after a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) suggested there were more than 2,000 incidents a day, with staff facing assault, being threatened with weapons, and racial and sexual abuse.
The alarming new figures show that shoplifting is getting worse, despite businesses paying a record £1.8billion on prevention tactics such as CCTV, more security guards and body worn cameras.
Some 61 per cent of retailers say the police response to calls for help has been ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
Retailers are reporting unprecedented levels of violence towards their staff, with the number of incidents involving a weapon more than doubling to 70 per day.
