Valuable statues stolen from Hatch End properties in same weekend

Officers are similarly probing the disappearance on Sunday September 12 of a statue of a man on a horse belonging to a 75-year-old man from nearby Pinnerwood Farm and Stud in Woodhall Road.
"It's highly likely they are linked," said a Harrow Police spokesman. "The locations are in close proximity and both involve large objects believed to have be stolen on or around September 12."
Mrs Crosby told the Observer: "We'd been on holiday in January and we purchased the statues from shops and had them shipped back to Southampton from the Far East - the bronze from Thailand and the marble from Vienam.
"They are very valuable but they were not insured. The bronze is worth £3,000 or more.
"They are very, very heavy and it must have taken quite a lot of people and access to our garden is not easy: we have a big fence and they have cut a hole in it.
"We back onto Oxhey Lane Farm and you can't really see into our garden from the road, so we have got our suspicions."
Speaking on Wednesday last week (Sept 15), Mrs Crosby added: "We reported them stolen straight away on Monday and the police never came back to us.
"It just so happened my husband saw a community officer walking down our road this morning and he came in and looked around and said they had no record of this ever having been reported, yet I had phoned on two occasions."
A Harrow Police spokesman said: "Due to the circumstances of the offence - the fact that there were no suspects seen, no witnesses and little likelihood of retrieving forensic evidence - this was not dealt with as an emergency call.
"Instead it was deemed suitable for investigation at the telephone investigation desk at South Harrow Police Station.
"The telephone investigation desk contacted the victim on Thursday September 16 and arranged for a visit from the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team, who made local enquiries and provided the victim with appropriate crime prevention advice."
n Anyone with information on these crime should call Harrow Police on 0300 123 1212 or Crimestoppes anonymously on 0800 555 111.