Armed with a crowbar and other tools, he spent nights wandering past the houses at the Ons Buiten allotment complex in Haarlem. He took TVs, game consoles and many tools with him, but the thief kept disappearing into the darkness. Until the night of December 30 to 31. Thanks to the police, ‘the Haarlem allotment garden squatter’ is now in jail.
“It all started the evening before Christmas,” says Jeroen Schneiders, chairman of Ons Buiten. “The intruder had visited a number of houses and had taken tools and TVs. He used one of our wheelbarrows to transport the stolen goods. We initially thought it was rowdy young people, but then we saw that there was a fence at the back of the house. the park had been pushed aside.”
The thief appears to have worked creatively. “There is a ditch near the fence. But there is also a trailer with rubble and other waste from the municipality. He took a mattress from it and placed it over the ditch,” Schneiders explains.
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Older lady ‘robbered’ in house
After Christmas it happens again for a few nights. Once again, TVs and tools disappeared. “He even had the audacity to knock on an older lady’s door and shout for her to open the door,” Schneiders says.
“She spent the night in her house and shouted at him to leave. When he refused, she immediately called 911. The burglar took his chances and quickly fled.” The chairman himself is also a victim. The thief also breaks open his house, as shown below.
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Red-handed
The gardeners are fed up and are putting up cameras. The police are also taking action. “They installed cameras and motion sensors at the fence and patrolled with a thermal camera for a few nights. On the night of December 30 to 31, they caught him red-handed.
With a TV still in his hands,” explains Schneiders, who still speaks highly of the police today. “They handled it very quickly.” After a short chase, officers overpower the thief.
A lot of damage
Several allotment gardeners have now reported theft and destruction. “The total damage is more than 10,000 euros.” Schneiders hopes that the municipality will quickly remove the trailer with rubble, because it is now scattered around the allotment complex. “We don’t know much about the perpetrator, except that he is a man and is probably in his mid-thirties.”