By Sam Coleman
An attempted burglary of nine hundred pounds worth of alcohol happened last Tuesday at Oakham Tesco in Leicestershire.
Two middle aged men and a middle aged woman attempted to leave the store with a trolley worth of unpaid alcohol using a technique called ‘nesting’, in which bags are filled with an expensive product and then covered with cheaper products that staff wouldn’t expect to be stolen.
Manager at the store, Sophie Burdett, aged twenty two said: “They didn’t look suspicious at all to be honest, it was actually a customer that came and told us they were up to something.”
The trio had thrown numerous bottles of whiskey, vodka and wine into the bags, as well as several crates of beer and cider.
Miss Burdett alarmingly said: “We only have guarding Thursday to Sunday and those people looking to burgle the store seem to know that.
“We very rarely have trouble on those days, it’s Monday to Wednesday that it tends to happen when they know managers are off the shop floor. It’s dead weird but they seem to know our routine.”
From October 2015 to September 2016 there were 7,311 burglaries alone in Leicestershire, with those stats rising when it comes to holiday season and Christmas is just around the corner.
Miss Burdett said that these things ‘happen a lot’ due to them being a ‘big store in a popular area’ so it’s one of their main priorities to keep on top of.
When the trolley was full the trio avoided the tills and headed for the door before they were confronted by a member of staff, at which point they ditched the trolley and made a run for it getting away successfully.
Miss Burdett said: “This is probably the most I’ve seen try and be stolen and I’ve worked here for nearly four years so we got very lucky this time getting alerted by a customer.
New precautions have been made to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”
If anything suspicious is seen in stores, customers are urged to tell a member of staff immediately so that the correct actions can be taken.
