Shropshire hero neighbour nabs thief red-handed
A burglar was arrested after a Shropshire have-a-go-hero stopped him making off with a haul of power tools from a garden in the early hours of the morning.
Keith Ward, 60, was woken by the rattling of his padlocked gate and found the man trying to climb over it – next to a stack of power tools from his neighbour's garage.
He confronted the burglar and detained him at the house on Soulton Road, Wem, until police arrived and made an arrest.
"You do these things without thinking," said Mr Ward, who works for Fujitsu Services in Telford.
"You'd like to think someone would do the same for you if it was your stuff being taken. He was a burglar who got caught, he got what was coming to him.
"I heard him in the night rattling the gate. He was trying to get out with the stuff and when I came out he must have heard me because he was trying to climb the gate. I made it plain to him that he wasn't going anywhere."
Neighbour Rene Rogers, 77, said it was her husband Ernest's equipment the burglar was trying to take, having broken into their garage at about 4am yesterday.
Mr Rogers, 77, still works as a self-employed builder and has a lot of tools, she said.
"We can laugh about it now, but when we first woke up and got the note from the police, I can't think how we would have been if it wasn't for Keith. Keith was more than a hero, he deserves a reward quite honestly."
A spokesman for West Mercia Police said: "A man in his 40s was arrested at about 4.30am on Monday morning. A resident there was asleep and woke when he heard the side gate of his house being forced.
"He noticed a man at the scene with a large number of power tools stacked at the side of the house and detained him until police arrived. The man was brought in for questioning and released on police bail while investigations continue."
