The Grand Tour host Richard Hammond and his family were burgled last month after being hit with some kind of anaesthetic gas, his wife Mindy Hammond said.
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Speaking to the Sunday Express, Hammond said the family and their friends were holidaying at a villa in San Tropez when burglars entered the property and searched the rooms of all 15 guests.
She said they only realised something was wrong the next morning, when her fifteen-year-old daughter Willow couldn’t find her watch.
“We thought she’d just left it somewhere, or maybe one of the teenagers had been sleepwalking in the night,” Hammond said.
“It wasn’t until myself and the other mums were taking the kids to the beach that Richard called and said, ‘Have you looked in your purses?’
“We all looked in our purses and wallets and all the cash had gone. Nothing else had been stolen.”
She voiced her suspicions about the use of some kind of knockout gas because nobody in the villa awoke during the incident.
“I’m pretty convinced we must have been gassed or something, because they were in all of the bedrooms – they went where they wanted, into each room, opening and closing the drawers, searching through handbags etc.,” she said.
Luckily, Hammond said the alleged crims were caught on CCTV at the property, and were detained within 48 hours by French authorities.
The incident comes after several reported incidences of anaesthetic gas use during burglaries in the region, but experts have stated it’d be very, very difficult for thieves to pump enough gas into the villa to successfully sedate the victims before making off with their cash.
Which just means the alleged burglars were just incredibly stealthy, which is frightening enough, really.
