Burglar's 'head-on' smash and grab

11:55am Tuesday 6th March 2007

A BURGLAR carried out a smash and grab with a difference - leaping head-first through a pane of glass.

CCTV cameras caught the raider peering through a glass door before standing back and sizing it up.

"It's something I have never come across, somebody diving through the window. Usually people throw things through or break the window then climb through."

Pc Gary White

He then launched himself through the door, exploding into a classroom in a shower of broken glass.

He calmly dusted himself down and helped himself to a £2,500 plasma-screen television from Walbottle Campus Technology College in Newcastle.

He was branded "crazy" by police and the school's head teacher for diving through the reception door.

PC Gary White of Northumbria Police who is investigating the theft which took place during the early hours of the morning of February 23, said he had never seen anything like it.

"All of a sudden he just runs at the door and dives through it," he said.

"It's something I have never come across, somebody diving through the window. Usually people throw things through or break the window then climb through. He could have cut himself badly.

"It's just a weird incident. I can't understand why he has done this."

The CCTV shows the man standing outside the door and then seconds later he runs through the glass leaving a huge human-shape hole in the panel.

Stepping over the shattered glass he searches the reception area before stealing the silver 42 inch Hitachi Plasma screen, which was hanging on the reception wall.

He then leaves, climbing back through the hole he made.

And Mike Booth, headteacher at the school said the thief could have been killed if the window had been made of a different type of glass.

He said "It is crazy. He has dived through the window and broken the glass, it was very dangerous.

"He could have been very badly injured and it would have served him right.

It was a very anti-social act. It was not just the loss of the screen it was the mess as well.

"The glass could have cut his throat. He wasn't to know what type of glass it was.

"If it had been toughened glass he could have broken his neck, and if it had been older glass it would have cracked and become jagged and he could have severed an artery.

"Luckily for him it is the type of glass you have in your car windscreen and it just shattered into small pieces. He was lucky but it would have been his own fault if he had been hurt."

Mr Booth believes it is possible that the screen was taken by someone familiar with the school.

"It could have been someone that knew the screen was there, people are always in and out of the school," he added. "Or it could have been an opportunist who saw the screen through the window."

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