By John Connell

Last updated at 14:32, Monday, 26 March 2012

A five-year-old girl has been left heartbroken after a burglar stole her computer and her pocket money while she lay in bed.

Sandra Dixon

The thief entered the house on Friday night while Courtney McDonald and her mother Sandra Dixon were fast asleep upstairs at their home on Greenmoor Road, in Egremont.

The burglar sneaked into the house and took a tub full of her savings and her laptop. The thief also took some rolling tobacco and some cigarette papers.

Someone had been arrested on suspicion of burglary

Miss Dixon, 29, said: “It’s the fact that they came into my house that is so shocking.

“What if my daughter had woken up and come down for a drink? It’s really scary.”

Courtney, who goes to Orgill Primary School, uses her laptop to play games and to help with her school work.

It is the first computer she has owned, her father, James McDonald, 33, who lives on Station Road in Wigton said.

Miss Dixon said the money, a mixture of silver and copper coins, probably totalled about £10 and had been collected over several weeks.

Courtney’s father went to Egremont as soon as his mother phoned to tell him about the burglary .

He said: “My daughter is very upset about it. She just asks why they have stolen her stuff and she has been crying.”

It was Mr McDonald’s brother, Tom, who first suspected that Miss Dixon’s home had been burgled.

When he want to put something in the outside bin he had spotted people in his mother’s back garden, which backs on to Miss Dixon’s house

He asked one of them what they were doing and they ran off. He then went to check on Miss Dixon.

She said: “After it had happened my ex partner’s brother came over and asked I seen anything.”

A police spokesman said that thieves had entered through an insecure door or window overnight on Friday.

Anyone with information about the crime can call the police on 101.

First published at 12:25, Monday, 26 March 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk