SOME of the Christmas spirit went out of the Wilkinson family’s Taree household when thieves stole about $500 worth of lights from their front yard display at the weekend. Yvette and Sean Wilkinson say the huge Christmas light display they put on every year in their High Street yard is very popular in the neighbourhood and they get many letters thanking them for the trouble they go to. But this year someone took so much of a liking to the display they tried to steal it all.
“We were very lucky they didn’t take the whole lot,” Yvette told the Times, saying whoever was responsible for the theft had gone to a lot of trouble to unplug most of the lights and untangle wiring. They even cut through cable ties and removed staples used to mount the light display, taking care not to break anything, she said. Her children, aged four, two and four months old, love the display and couldn’t understand why some of it was missing, she said.
They just woke up on Sunday morning and the display wasn’t the same any more. The thieves had entered their front yard through unlocked gates some time between when they turned the lights off at 11 o’clock Saturday night and 7am on Sunday. It would have taken them some time to do all the unplugging and disconnecting, Yvette said. “They were very brazen about it,” she said. The Wilkinsons reported the theft to police and hope they will be able to track down whoever was responsible.