It was shortly after 2 a.m. on March 2, the police mentioned, when two members of the British Royal Air Drive approached a statue of Paddington Bear, sitting placidly on a park bench in Newbury, England, and holding his favourite snack: a sandwich dripping with marmalade.
The boys then kicked, broke aside and stole Paddington, leaving a husk of the bear nonetheless affixed to the park bench. However it seems that that they had picked the fallacious bear to mess with, within the fallacious place.
Newbury has a particular reverence for Paddington, because the birthplace of Michael Bond, the writer of the beloved kids’s ebook sequence in regards to the genial Peruvian bear and his adopted household in London, the Browns.
So when the lads, Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, each 22, pleaded responsible to felony harm on Tuesday, the choose had some selection phrases earlier than he sentenced them.
“Paddington Bear is a beloved cultural icon with kids and adults alike,” the choose, Sam Goozée of Studying Magistrates’ Courtroom, informed the lads, in response to a duplicate of his remarks launched by the court docket. “He represents kindness, tolerance and promotes integration and acceptance in our society. His well-known label hooked up to his duffle coat says, ‘Please take care of this bear.’ On the night time of two March 2025, your actions have been the antithesis of every thing Paddington stands for.”
Choose Goozée sentenced the lads to 150 hours of group service and ordered them every to pay 2,725 British kilos, or about $3,530, to restore Paddington. “Your actions lacked respect and integrity, two values you need to uphold as members of the armed forces,” he mentioned.
Each males expressed regret for the harm that that they had achieved to the bear.
“Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Heath deeply remorse their actions on the day and instantly accepted duty when spoken to by the police,” their lawyer, Tom Brymer, mentioned in an e mail. “Little question this was conduct which was fully out of character.”
The statue of Paddington, classically attired in a purple bucket hat and blue coat, was considered one of one 23 that have been put in final yr throughout the UK and Eire to advertise the discharge of the film “Paddington in Peru.”
On March 2, security-camera footage confirmed two males — later recognized as Mr. Heath and Mr. Lawrence — approaching Paddington on a darkish avenue. Each males have been “inebriated” on the time, the choose mentioned.
After some prying and pulling, the lads succeeded in eradicating Paddington’s facade. They then carried Paddington to a taxi, which took them and the damaged bear again to their Air Drive base, Choose Goozée mentioned.
Officers from the Newbury Neighborhood Policing Staff tracked Mr. Heath and Mr. Lawrence to their barracks later that day, arrested them and seized the broken statue, which had been stashed within the trunk of Mr. Lawrence’s automotive, the police mentioned.
Cracking the case was a degree of delight for the native police.
“The Paddington Bear statue is a beloved a part of Newbury so we did every thing we may to find it and produce the offenders to justice,” Inspector Alan Hawkett of the Newbury Neighborhood Policing Staff mentioned in a statement on Tuesday.
“After a brief keep at Newbury police station,” he added, “we handed the statue again to its house owners so it may be restored.”
The Newbury Enterprise Enchancment District, which owns the Paddington statue, is planning to have the bear repaired and restored to his rightful perch on the park bench.
Within the meantime, a spokesman mentioned the district had coated the bench with a gazebo tent, partly to guard passers-by from the tough edges on the broken statue and “partly in order that kids wouldn’t see the bear within the damaged state.”
Source link