An unusual sticker left on the outside of a caravan by its owner has helped police identify the vehicle and recover it for the owner, even after it had been heavily tampered with.
The Swift caravan was one of two stolen from a caravan storage facility in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, in February, and highlights the importance of having good caravan security.
According to PC Paul Gamble, wildlife, heritage and rural crime officer at Derbyshire Police, a gang of up to eight people accessed the site by cutting down hedges. They used chainsaws and oxyacetylene torches to cut through the hitchlock, and then towed the caravans across three fields before reaching a road.
The caravan was then briefly stored in Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire before police noticed that the tow car used in the raid had driven to Ingoldmells in Lincolnshire with a caravan – but had returned on its own.
Officers then visited around a dozen seasonal sites in the area, before eventually discovering the stolen caravan, only because there was an unusual dealer sticker on the bumper that the owner was able to identify. Since the theft all the windows on the caravan had been replaced with new etchings, and a fake CRiS sticker had been attached.
“Once the hitch cover had been removed, we could also see the burn marks left by the torch,” said PC Gamble.
Rural crime teams from Derbyshire and Lincolnshire Police travelled to Ingoldmells earlier this month to recover the caravan. Investigations into the other caravan stolen, and the search for the gang, is still ongoing.
PC Gamble said there were two lots of victims of the crime, as he said when the caravan was retrieved, it had already been bought as a second-hand caravan by a “vulnerable party” who had genuinely been deceived.
He said they had wrongly believed the caravan could not have been stolen because it was being offered for sale at a price not far off what it would go for in a commercial dealer, and not at a knock-down price.
Since the incident, the police have also visited the storage site to advise on how to improve security.
If you’re after a way of beefing up your tourer’s security, see how Nigel Donnelly went about adding a caravan safe to his van.
Lead image: Lincolnshire Police
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