Caravan theft misery ruins holiday plans
Thieves have ruined a five-year old girl’s summer holiday, just two weeks before she was due to go away camping.
The thieves took the family’s car and caravan from outside their home in the village of Tirley, near Tewkesbury.
Steve Evans, his five-year-old daughter Sophie, and his fiancé Elaine Bassett, had been planning the camping trip to Somerset for months and had begun the packing and final preparation.
Steve said: “When the thieves open the caravan they will think its Christmas as we had just packed it, ready for our holiday, with a new TV, video, CD player, cooking and caravanning equipment.
“My daughter keeps asking ‘Aren’t we going on holiday any more, daddy?’ But what can I say? I have phoned hundreds of campsites with static carvans but they are all booked up – it is the peak season. “Thieves just have no concern for the knock-on effects crime has on people’s lives. “Not only so I live in an isolated village but I am the father of a small child and am a nurse manager, on call 24 hours a day, and I cannot do without the car.” The caravan is a beige Compass Raleigh E510.
Steve said: “It was definitely planned. They needed a special tool for the caravan – which you would not ordinarily carry around with you. They must have know exactly what they were doing and could have been professionals.”
The couple have since rung all of the surrounding 24-hour petrol stations in a last-ditch effort to find anyone who might have seen the car and caravan refueling but to no avail.
Elaine said: “Tirley is a quiet place, which does not usually have much crime. I am very upset, angry and frustrated by all this.” Police are investigating the incident.
Gloucestershire police spokeman Dave Avery said: “It is unusual for us to attend this sort of crime because there is a lack of forensic evidence. “The stolen vehicles were put on the police national computer bank within minutes of the incident being reported. “The Isuzu Trooper was in fact found in Ledbury Road, Hereford, on Sunday. Unfortunately, the caravan has not yet been found but we are doing are upmost to locate it.”
Anyone with information about the crime can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, or contact polic on 01452 521 201.