Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: X-RAYS USED TO CATCH THIEF

by Hazed

Simon Hooper has been exposed as a thief after police used first a metal detector, then an x-ray machine, to prove his crime. How come? Because he had walked into a jewelers shop and swallowed a £1,750 engagement ring!

Hopper went to the Clock House jewellers in Dorchester, England last November and asked to see the ring. The jeweller Fred Burgess obliged but when Hopper asked to see other rings and Burgess turned his back to get them, Hopper popper the ring into his mouth and swallowed it.

Burgess recalled, "He walked in and told me his girlfriend had just had a baby and so he wanted to ask her to marry him. He seemed quite plausible and I had no reason to believe that he couldn't afford it. As he held it in his hand I turned back to the window to get two more rings but when I looked at him again the ring had disappeared.

"I asked him where it was and he claimed he had given it back to me. But the box it was in was empty and I asked him to empty his pockets. I still couldn't find the ring and I could only assume he had swallowed it because there wasn't anywhere else it could be."

Burgess called the police, who searched Hopper but were unable to find the missing ring - so then they used a metal-detecting wand, and lo and behold, it beeped when passed over his stomach. Busted! An x-ray later confirmed the thief's guilt by clearly showing the ring inside him.

Hopper was up in court last week and admitted theft. He was jailed for 12 weeks.

Regarding the ring, Fred Burgess reckons he'll have to take a £1,000 loss on it because he can only sell it to another jeweller. He lamented: "I don't want to sell the ring in my shop now I know where it has been so it will be polished up and then sold through the trade for about £600 pounds."

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