Hi-Vis Burglar Caught With £12,000 of Lingerie and Sex Toys

A burglar who raided an Ann Summers shop in Nottingham city centre wearing a high-visibility vest has been jailed for three years, after police caught him within minutes and found a car boot crammed with lingerie and sex toys worth more than £12,000.

Footage released by Nottinghamshire Police shows officers jumping out of a patrol car in the early hours of Aug. 14 and sprinting down a pedestrian street after a man in a yellow hi-vis vest. “Stop! Get on the floor now,” an officer shouts, before ordering him onto his knees with his hands on his head and handcuffing him. “The allegation is you’ve gone into Ann Summers through the fire exit,” the officer tells the man, who replies, “A burglary, where?” Security camera footage from inside the shop shows the same man crawling across an office floor and rummaging through a box of stock, while an outdoor camera captures him carrying large cardboard boxes down a metal fire escape into a rear yard. Later footage shows officers in gloves emptying a hatchback whose boot and folded-down back seats are packed with red and black lace lingerie and boxed sex toys. “Going to need another bag, I guess,” one officer remarks.

Police said they received a call at 4:32 a.m. reporting a burglary in progress at the store on Long Row, where a window had been smashed, and arrived within three minutes. Jason Kamal, 48, and Ashley Hillsley, 21, of Mansfield, ran off but were quickly detained, and products worth £12,059 were found in Hillsley’s vehicle. Kamal initially denied entering the shop despite his face being visible on CCTV, while Hillsley said he had been bullied into acting as a lookout and was told he would receive a large sum of money and would no longer be “a nobody.” The court heard the pair had ripped an alarm panel from the wall and damaged a stockroom door during the raid.

Kamal was also linked to a burglary at a mobile phone shop in Arnold on July 28, where around £13,000 of electronic devices were stolen, after he left a vape at the scene “with his DNA all over it” and was found using a phone taken from the store. At Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday, Oct. 15, he admitted six counts of burglary and was jailed for three years. The court heard he had 36 previous convictions for 61 offences. Hillsley, who admitted one count, received an 18-month community order with 150 hours of unpaid work.

“These are not mastermind criminals, quite the opposite, who had no chance whatsoever of getting away with this crime,” said Chief Inspector Kylie Davies of Nottinghamshire Police. “Business crime is not a victimless crime.” Police said the case was part of Operation Reclaim, launched in May to target criminals operating in Nottingham city centre.