Mum horrified by what she saw on CCTV as children slept upstairs

A family of five were sleeping soundly in their beds when a masked gang broke into their home, ransacked the kitchen and stole their keys. Mum Jo O'Farrell had no idea the family's Mercedes had been stolen until she was woken by a phone call from a police officer, who said her car had been spotted racing down the M6 next to a stolen Audi.

She said: "At 3.30am we got a call from police asking our whereabouts, because our car was seen travelling alongside another stolen vehicle down the M6. We looked outside and saw the car was gone. I thought I was going to have a heart attack, because we had been in the house with our children the whole time. We were screaming for the children, wondering where they were."

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Jo and her husband checked their Ring doorbell camera, which showed three masked men walking up the driveway of their Southport home at around 1.05am on Thursday, September 26. At least one of the men remained outside the home while another broke in through a back door and entered the kitchen, where he rummaged through drawers and swiped the family's car and house keys.

Jo, a mum of three, said: "They came down the side of our drive towards the side gate which was locked, and they were obviously communicating there but not talking. They were all wearing the same outfits, all balaclavas up. They were dressed identically. They all had the same logo on their pants, the same logo on their tops. They all seemed to be older men, not young kids.

"They came through the back door on the patio, they searched the kitchen, went through the drawers and took all the keys for the property and made off within a fraction of 10 minutes. We were upstairs. They were moments away from us. We weren't disturbed because they were so quiet."

She said police attended her house and told her that the same men were believed to have stolen another set of car keys and an Audi from a house in Ainsdale that same night. The Audi was later found abandoned in Bootle, but Jo's husbands' red Mercedes-AMG A-Class remains missing.

Jo said: "Police have dusted for prints. They've interviewed the whole road. Our neighbour managed to catch them on his ring because they tried to get over his wall to get into our house. On the evening it happened, we thought the car had been found because on my tracking app it said the car was parked on Rotten Row. But it was just the tracker they'd ripped out and thrown away.

"We've had to get our security measures tightened. We feel very vulnerable. You don't want to leave the house in case you're hit again. We're petrified. These men could have been armed. I don't think they would've stopped until they found that key. They could have come upstairs.

She continued: "We think we were targeted because the car is a high end car, and we think they've been eyeing it for some time. They knew exactly how to get in. That's the scary thing about it. I don't feel safe any more. I don't feel safe in this house. I don't feel safe getting a car or hiring one in case they come back. I feel shaken up.

"My husband is a GP and he's having to get lifts from the staff at his surgery just to get to work. It's not good at all, and he can't do home visits now because he has no car. It's had an knock on effect on everything. The whole situation is just awful. I wouldn't like this to happen to another family."

A Merseyside police spokesman said: "We are appealing for information following a burglary in Southport in the early hours of Thursday 26 September. We received a report that just after 1am three males had broken into an address on Balfour Road and took a car keys, cash and credit cards and then stole a red A45 Mercedes car from the driveway. Police attended and an investigation is ongoing including obtaining CCTV and doorbell footage."

If you have CCTV, smart doorbell or dashcam footage which can help with the investigation, you can submit it here: https://unitedkingdom1cpp-portal.digital-policing.co.uk/merseyside/appeal/residential-burglary. Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact @MerPolCC on Twitter, ‘Merseyside Police Contact Centre’ on Facebook or ring 101 with reference 24000825074. You can also contact Crimestoppers, anonymously on 0800 555 111.