Man is arrested following break-in at Town Church
Police have arrested a man on suspicion of a weekend burglary at the Town Church as the church picks up the pieces from the weekend’s unprecedented break-in.
Rector Penny Graysmith said the congregation and church officials had been left shocked, disappointed and frustrated with the damage left in the aftermath of a break-in at about midnight on Friday.
Money was stolen from a collection box, and damage was caused to a 200-year-old wooden floor.
Police confirmed a 39-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday night in connection with the investigation. No one had been charged as of last night, as officers continued their inquiries.
‘It is disrespectful to a holy place, a beautiful and welcoming place of refuge,’ said Mrs Graysmith.
‘The money is annoying, but the harm to the building itself is just so sad. The irony is that if someone was in need, we would have provided help.
‘It is made almost worse that it came just after Christmas, with all the positivity of the Christmas tree festival and the hard work everyone had put in.
‘One selfish intruder has almost ruined that.’
Mrs Graysmith discovered the break-in when she got to the church on Saturday morning.
Someone had entered the church vestry by breaking a pane of glass in a small leaded window, reaching through and releasing a catch before wriggling inside.
They had then found themselves in a locked room and had smashed through the bottom panel of an internal door to enter the main body of the church.
The intruder had then dragged a very heavy metre-high cylindrical collection box, which had stood next to the main doors of the church, 50 metres across the floor, in the process leaving gouge marks in the 200-year-old parquet flooring.
‘It had a once-in-a-generation polishing 15 months ago and now...’ she said.
‘The collection box has a concrete and metal base and is really heavy.
‘If you were going to break into it, I don’t know why you would move it.
‘It was also quite valuable itself, having been made at some expense 12 years ago.’
She said the burglar had obviously ignored the sticker on the collection box that warned the area was covered by CCTV.
‘The church is actually very secure and we have good quality images of who did this from several angles,’ she said.
‘But it is unprecedented for us to be broken into this way.’
Once the perpetrator had reached a small carpeted corridor on the far side of the church, they used a heavy object to smash the toughened safety glass of the collecting box.
‘They actually left a lot of the change, which was covered in sharp fragments of glass,’ Mrs Graysmith said.
‘They also took a GSPCA collecting bucket that was still here from the Christmas tree and that had been locked downstairs.’
