Thread: English house owner bound and gagged

Boonlua Chatree
A wealthy British man was robbed at gunpoint in his luxury home in Soi Thapraya despite the house having a high wall and a burglar alarm.
Police received a report of the robbery shortly after midnight on June 24 and officers led by Pol Col Somnuek Changate, commander of Pattaya Municipal Police went immediately to the scene.

The two-story concrete house constructed in a Thai-Bali style was a luxurious one, standing on 150 square wah of land and surrounded by a steel reinforced concrete wall. The burglar alarms were still screaming. The entrance was wide open and the owner, Paul Edward Futcher, a 56-year-old British national, was inside in a state of shock and fear.
He told officers that three men aged between 20 and 25 years who looked like drug abusers broke into the house while he was working at his computer downstairs. One of the men was carrying a gun and ordered him to hand over all his valuables while the other two ransacked the house.
After that he was forced to open the safe on the second floor, which contained three one-baht gold necklaces, one gold ring, one hundred British pounds, 400,000 baht, 2,000 baht in a purse and a Sony video camera, the total value being about 500,000 baht.
The men used a curtain to tie his hands together, the curtain rope to tie his legs together at the ankles and a plastic rubbish bag to gag him. They left him in the bedroom before making a run for it with the stolen property. After five minutes he thought that the thieves had left and wriggled along the floor to set off the burglar alarm. He suffered cuts to his mouth from the rubbish liner. The officers radioed other police to block off the area, but there was no trace of the thieves.
Futcher told officers that he owned a website where he offered house decoration services. He said he had purchased the land and built a house on it where he lived with his partner, who had gone out for a meal at about 7 pm. He had been alone in the house when the robbers broke in.
Wuttipong said that the alarm system was a good quality one and a code had to be entered when entering or leaving. He said that the wall was more than three meters high with steel poles on top, and he failed to understand how the men had managed to enter the house without setting off the alarms. Wuttipong added that the house had previously been burgled, and that it was easily observed from the outside as it was surrounded by woodland and there were no other houses in the vicinity.
Pol. Col. Somnuek said that the men had got into the house without setting off the alarm due either to a technical error or to Wuttipong forgetting to close the door properly as he left. He added that it looked like the robbery had been planned in advance and that the thieves were just waiting for the right moment to pounce. Forensics officers have collected fingerprints and police are now searching for the robbers.

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