A great pizza evidence

A PIZZA box was used to identify the suspects of an attempted break-in on Friday.

The box was left in the garden of a house, occupied by five student girls, in Reed Avenue, at around 2am.

Lucy Harrington, 18, was the first to notice that there were people in the garden. As she went to check downstairs she could see someone trying to break in through the kitchen door.

“There was another person trying to break down the garden fence as well,” said Miss Harrington, a fresher at Canterbury Christ Church University. “One of my other housemates spotted a young lad running across the garden so we just all ran upstairs to hide. We didn’t know how many people were out there and if they’d actually get into the house. We were so scared.”

When the police arrived they checked the garden and found a Domino’s pizza box had been left behind. Forensic evidence led them to one suspect, and matched with the descriptions from the girls, an arrest was made.

The police also took the box to the Domino’s takeaway on Military Road where they could scan the barcode and work out who bought the pizza and what time they were in. After checking on CCTV, there were images of two young men buying the pizza and this gave the police two more positive identities.

Miss Harrington said: “It was very clever how the police worked out who it was. By identifying two of them on camera they could link with our descriptions so they knew exactly who it was. Even the forensic evidence, it’s like something you see on TV.”

Students are urged to be safe and sensible while living away from home. Houses where young people live are seen as easy targets by burglars.