Thieves target Shropshire deli taking safe and charity box cash

The owners of Van Doesburgs Gourmet Food Shop, in High Street, Church Stretton, returned on Bank Holiday Monday to find their shop had been raided overnight.

The theft is similar to one at Broad Bean Wholefoods on Ludlow's Broad Street in July where a safe was also taken. In that raid, the thieves prised the safe from the wall after pushing a stolen ladder through a skylight to get in.

Sergeant Adrian Woolley, of West Mercia Police's south Shropshire safer neighbourhood team, said the thieves got in through the rear storage area of the shop and removed a small safe from inside.

"It was about 70cm tall and would have been some weight, so to take that out of the shop they might have had something to wheel it on," he added.

"Two charity boxes were also forced open.

"Also a pair of adapted orthopaedic shoes were taken, I don't know why."

He urged anyone who saw anything suspicious in Church Stretton town centre in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday to get in touch – particularly anyone who saw someone wheeling something heavy though the streets.

The burglaries come after a spate of break-ins in the region. Thieves made off with cash and a safe after breaking into the Golden Cross, in High Street, Clee Hill, on August 21, with gaming machines and a till also targeted.

Earlier the same month, jewellery and cash were taken from Emporos gift shop in Ludlow in a break-in involving a ladder on August 10. In July a number of businesses were targeted across 48 hours, with the most serious raid involving the safe being wrenched off the wall at Broad Bean delicatessen.

Police have urged businesses to secure high up windows, skylights and out-of-sight entrances.

Anyone with information on the Van Doesburgs burglary can call the south Shropshire safer neighbourhood team on 101, quoting incident 218s of August 31.