Clumsy burglar climbs up, but falls

A burglar tried to enter a house in Malnate, but fell from the window and was arrested while in the act.

The protagonist of the clumsy burglary in Malnate, in the house of the lawyer, Sandro Damiani, the former Mayor of the town, was a 38-year-old Rumanian, who was already known to the Police, and who was a resident of Varese.

The man got into the garden of the house, tried to climb over a wall, and enter through a window. However, he lost his balance and fell to the ground, from a height of about 2 metres, and temporarily lost consciousness. One of his accomplices managed to get away, after hiding on the roof. No objects were taken; some garden tools were ready to be taken away, but the burglars failed to do this, as a result of the “accident”.

THE STORY

“I had just gone to bed, at about 1.30 a.m.,” Damiani said. “At first, I heard a dull thud, then something like an explosion. I went to check the whole house, the basement, the garage, but found nothing. Then, when I looked out of the bathroom window, I saw a ladder leaning against the wall and my garden trimmer next to the gate; so, I called the Carabinieri, who arrived in 10 minutes. We came out with a torch, and saw the body of someone on the ground, under one of the first floor windows. He seemed to be dead, but after a few minutes, he moved a finger: the Carabinieri arrested him and took him away at about 3.50 a.m., after an ambulance had arrived and his condition had been checked over.

This, however, was the end for the Damiani family. “As soon as the police and ambulance had gone, we went back to bed, but heard noises coming from the roof: one, two, three times. It sounded like there was someone creeping over our heads,” the former Mayor of Malnate explained. “We phoned the Carabinieri again, but the accomplice of the first burglar managed to get away; we only found his footprints in the snow. He’d probably hidden behind the solar panels when his partner fell. They didn’t steal anything and only cracked one of the windows of the bathroom with a stone, which was fortunately fitted with burglar-proof glass. They had certainly made a previous visit to check, it’s impossible they had ended up in this private cul-de-sac, by chance. I really can’t imagine what might have happened if they had got into the house.”