Despite the alarms, the vigilance of a loved one and the intervention of the police, thieves succeeded after three attempts in burglarizing the house of a retired couple from Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon during Christmas Eve.
The Christmas Eve evening of a retired couple from Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon was ruined by a burglary. After three attempts, the thieves managed to steal valuable items and ransack the home. “It’s real relentlessness, they trashed everything,” testify Christine* and Thierry to the Progress.
They were 300 km from home spending the evening of Tuesday, December 24 with their grandchildren when they received a signal on their phone indicating that an intruder alarm had gone off around 7:30 p.m.
A relative saw a suspicious car near the house. The police intervened but during this attempt, the thieves managed to bend the garage gate before fleeing.
The burglars seem to have tried their luck again two hours later. “The police called us to tell us that someone had tried to break into our house again. Our Christmas was ruined. Our grandchildren didn't understand why we were suddenly leaving,” Christine regrets.
Three jewels, a bottle of alcohol and some junk
Despite these two failures, the thieves will return a third time and manage to enter the retirees' homes. They only recovered a meager loot according to the victims (three pieces of jewelry and a bottle of alcohol) but also broke furniture and turned the house upside down.
The burglars seem to have taken advantage during this new attempt of the fact that the police were already busy with an intervention in another house in the neighborhood which had suffered similar incidents.
The couple, who have already suffered burglary attempts in the past, believe that burglars no longer shy away from alarms and surveillance systems. They fear one day coming face to face with thieves and plan to leave the region.
Over the first ten months of 2024, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region recorded a 17% increase in the number of alerts linked to burglaries (from 789 to 891). The Rhône department represents a quarter of all reports.
