Home invasion leaves owners feeling unsafe

Senseless vandals who stole a statue from the front yard of a Finley home have done far more damage than they realise, according to a local couple.Long time residents Faye and Jim Stubbs said they no longer feel safe inside their own home.The pair say whoever stole their statue on Saturday night scaled their locked fence with such stealth, it is scary.They said the fence was installed last year when the same statue was stolen from their yard.Mrs Stubbs said their statue being a target for thieves and vandals was worrying enough, and she feels ‘‘violated’’ knowing someone had again been skulking around her home while she and her husband slept.The three foot high concrete statue has been in the Stubbs’ yard for 45 years and was located underneath their bedroom window.The new fence is more than 1.2 metres high, and spikes were added in the hope it would deter other would-be thieves.‘‘Once we had the fence installed we felt very safe in our place until now,’’ Mrs Stubbs said.‘‘We are getting older and took comfort in having the fence since it seemed it was so easy for someone to take the statue right out from underneath our window.‘‘It doesn’t have any monetary value so I can’t understand why anyone would want to steal it.‘‘But it’s not even about the stolen statue, it’s the fact that now we feel very violated that someone could enter our premises with barely a trace.‘‘It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.’’Mrs Stubbs said there would have been more than one thief in their yard, given the effort it would take to get over the fence and then lift the statue over it.She said it also appeared targeted, given nothing else was taken from the property.‘‘I had the statue wired to a stake in the ground, wrapped around an old tree stump.‘‘They came prepared to cut it free.‘‘It wasn’t even really visible from the road because of a bush I have growing around the fence line.‘‘They must have jumped over the fence because the gate was locked, and the only sign of entry other than the stolen statue was the ‘beware of dog’ sign that had been bent.‘‘There must have been a few of them. They would have had to hand the statue to each other over the fence, because it was wet on Saturday night and there were no dents in the ground from the statue being dropped.‘‘I don’t know how they managed to take it without alerting our dog; they stole it right out from underneath our bedroom window.’’Mrs Stubbs said the incident has left them rattled, saying they thought they lived in a safe part of a safe community.Their home is located between Finley Primary School and Finley High School, on Pinnuck St.‘‘I can go along with a prank, I’m not an old angry lady, but despite our fence and padlocked gate someone still managed to get inside our property and it has made me feel very unsafe.’’Police are investigating the theft of the Stubbs’ statue. Anyone with information is asked to come forward.