WHEN a retired cartoonist disturbed a burglar on his property he knew that he would come off second best in a fight with the intruder.
So, proving that the pen can be mightier than the sword, he sketched the would-be burglar. Within half an hour a police patrol in Melbourne, Australia, armed with the cartoon had arrested the suspect.
William Ellis Green, 82, better known by his cartoonist’s initials as “WEG”, was making his breakfast when he heard “awful cursing and swearing” in the garden.
“I came out the back door and I suddenly saw this bloke tearing through the carport towards me and I was worried he might do some damage to the cars, the way he was carrying on,” Mr Green said.
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The man pushed Mr Green aside and took a bicycle from the garden shed. “I thought if I got into a fight, I’d lose my dressing gown and end up starkers in the backyard.”
He added that the man had tried to get away on the bicycle but its tyres were flat. “He was trying to get on it and he kept falling off and falling off, three or four times.”
Mr Green called the local police after the man had fled. When they arrived, officers asked Mr Green to describe the man but he instead offered to draw a portrait.
“I do caricatures all the time and I had no difficulty in remembering his face because he was so close to me,” he said. Mr Green worked for more than 20 years in daily newspapers drawing caricatures of Australian footballers.
“When he started drawing I knew straight away who he was – I’ve got Premiership posters that he has done,” one of the police officers said.
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Police cruised the neighbourhood with the sketch in search of the alleged burglar and found the man within half an hour.
Phil Rushford, a senior constable, told The Times, “The coppers who went on the job were driving down the street and they said, ‘Hey, that’s him!’ The cartoon was a dead ringer for the crook.”
Police believe that this is the first time they have caught a suspect using a cartoon sketch. Mr Rushford said that some people had used their mobile phones to take photographs at crime scenes, but they had not been as effective.
A 34-year-old man is expected to be charged with theft, burglary, assault and criminal damage. The missing bicycle was later found lying in a road near by.
IMPERFECT CRIME
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Dec 1999 Justin Plummer was jailed for life for murder after the imprint of his trainers was found on the victim
Nov 2005 Terry Payne was convicted of burglary recorded on a webcam
Jan 2006 Daniel Clark was arrested for robbing a hotel disguised as a Smurf after he failed to clean the blue paint from his face
Jan 2006 Swedish police caught a burglar after he answered a phone he had just stolen