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Who's the hoodie?
Clarissa Satchell19/ 8/2005
TODAY the Manchester Evening News appeals to our readers to help catch the city's dumbest hoodie.
The hapless hooded thief was well and truly caught on camera after he staged a raid {hellip} in David Arathoon's CCTV camera shop.
The culprit was filmed from every possible angle as he posed as a customer and asked to look at some cameras before snatching a £700 laptop from the counter and running out of the shop in Dale Street.
He is even pictured casing his target half an hour before he went into the city centre shop, jumping up to peer through a window - and looking directly into a camera.
In another shot he is caught outside the shop door peeping around the corner to see what is inside, even though just inches away from his face there is
'Astonishing'
Mr Arathoon, owner of CCTV Surveillance Solutions in Dale Street, said he found the theft "astonishing".
He said: "I've got to see the funny side of it, even though I'm annoyed to have lost a £700 laptop.
"Frame by frame, our cameras filmed him all around the shop. The stupidity of the guy to think stealing from a CCTV shop of all places would be a good idea is quite astonishing, really. When I looked back and even found one of our cameras had filmed him jumping up and looking through the window, I had to laugh. I knew we'd have photos of him in the street as well, because we have cameras trained on the street for security.
"It's what we do, after all, so why wouldn't we have the whole place covered with high-quality cameras?"
The pictures will hopefully prove invaluable to police investigating the crime, as unusually, the quality of the photographs mean they can pick out exactly where the thief put his fingerprints just before 6pm on Saturday.
Evidence
David, 54, said: "There's one of him with his hands on a door frame and I've blocked that area off, because the police said they were going to send a fingerprinting expert to dust it.
"I'm a bit surprised that they haven't come back yet, because I've got all this evidence on a plate for them." A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: "We will certainly be gathering any evidence, including these pictures and any fingerprints as part of our investigation."
She added that a forensic team had called at the shop to take fingerprints on Sunday afternoon - the day after the thief struck - but that the shop was closed. The officer in charge is in the process of arranging an appointment for them to make a return visit.
Do you know the identity of the man caught on camera? Send us an email, or call the Newsdesk on: 0161 832 5351.
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22/08/2005 at 12:46
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