The Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond and his wife Mindy have reportedly had a holiday horror while on a break in a St Tropez villa.
Sunday Express columnist Mindy has spoken about how she fears a team of burglars broke into their villa and pillaged their belongings while the family was holidaying.
The hot-spot for the rich and famous has been subject to similar attacks before where crooks have used anaesthetic gas before, and previous victims include former world champion Formula One driver Jenson Button, the Sunday Express reports.
Mindy now says her ‘blood runs cold’ when she recalls the night of the attack, in which she awoke, investigated and then went back to bed.
She said:
The real horror story for me was that the night before we were late to bed and I heard a door downstairs shut. I thought, ‘That’s a bit bizarre’, and decided I had to check it.
I went downstairs and into the hallway. The door into the living room was shut but I heard a male voice behind the door.
I thought it was another couple staying up and went back to bed.
That just makes my blood run cold. I could have easily walked in and it could have been unpleasant.
Mindy said the guests had been enjoying their time in the villa up until that point, dressing up in 1920s clothing, drinking cocktails and dancing. Only days into their trip burglars struck.
The next day, daughter Willow, 15, realised her watch had gone missing.
Mindy said:
We realised something was wrong when Willow couldn’t find her watch the next day, but we thought she’d just left it somewhere, or maybe one of the teenagers had been sleepwalking in the night.
It wasn’t until myself and the other mums were taking the kids to the beach that Richard called and said, ‘Have you looked in your purses?’. We all looked in our purses and wallets and all the cash had gone. Nothing else had been stolen.
Closer to home, figures released at the beginning of 2018 showed a 14 per cent year-on-year increase in offences recorded by police in England and Wales, The Guardian reports.
Knife crime has surged by 21 per cent in the 12 months to September 2017 and gun crime rising by 20 per cent, according to quarterly figures.
A 32 per cent rise in domestic burglary to 261,965 offences and an 18 per cent rise in vehicle-related crime was said by police chiefs to be a turning point after 20 years of sustained falls.
Chief constable Bill Skelly, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council said:
Today’s police officers are dealing with more complex crime, more safeguarding and protecting vulnerable people and an unprecedented terror threat, as well as tackling some of the genuine rises in knife and gun crime, robbery, burglary and vehicle-related crime – crimes which turn the trend on many years of reductions.
Official figures show the number of police officers in England and Wales has fallen by 930 in the past 12 months, to 121,929, the lowest level since comparable records began in 1996. Police officer numbers are now 22,424 below their peak in 2009, when there were 144,353 officers.
But still, we hope the Hammonds don’t lose any more sleep after the harrowing incident.
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Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.