My girl's trauma has made me see reality of burglary

Why does almost everyone get away with this mentally scarring crime?

- NEAL KEELING

I WAS seething with anger for months afterwards. At about 3am, a car thief t smashed the lock on French windows s at the rear of my home, broke in, found my car keys, and in the middle of a a stormy August night, drove my car away.

1 It was a regularly serviced white Audi A3 with 50,000 on the clock, and would have served me for several more years.

It was never recovered and was no doubt filleted in a chop shop somewhere in Bury or north Manchester.

I was peeved that a well looked-after car had gone in probably 90 seconds of criminal behaviour, and that Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits was in the c car's CD player when a professional who was born to steal took it.

But it was throughout the following year that I witnessed the real damage i the criminal had caused. My youngest daughter had been asleep while 20ft below her bedroom window the bur- o glar snapped open windows to the o lounge, walked through our house to the kitchen, and took my car keys.

My daughter was so traumatised she was unable to be in the house alone for f the next 12 months. Even now she will put the latch on the front door. That is t what continually triggers my anger what that lowlife did to my girl.

I was lucky, we didn't wake up and confront him. There was no physical i harm just deep mental scars left on my daughter. From stories I have covered with GMP, I know that the thief was most likely at the bottom of the food chain getting maybe £500 for delivering a £14,000 car to his crime boss. It is a lucrative 'business' with higher end cars such as an Audi S3 model fetching £1,500, and Range Rovers and executive cars £2,000, or even more if they are being stolen to be rung and sold onto an unsuspecting buyer, rather than chopped up for parts.