A SHOP owner today offered a reward to help catch raiders who broke into two premises in a village and stole thousands of pounds of stock.

Police hunting the burglars say they are following several leads and have already found the till stolen from one of the outlets in Trimley St Mary.

The break-ins happened between 10.30pm Monday and 6am Tuesday at Finicky’s Hair Design and Trimley Tandoori in the parade of shops in Faulkeners Way.

In both cases burglars smashed their way into the buildings by forcing the rear doors.

At Finicky’s, the thieves took sets of various sizes of limited edition GHD hair straighteners, other stock and the till, a haul worth about �4,000, while at the Indian takeaway they stole cash from the till.

Owner of Finicky’s Nick Murrell, who is offering a reward for information to help police catch and convict the burglars, said: “I just could not believe it – it’s the first time we have had anything like this happen in 20 years. We want to warn other businesses to be on their guard and help the police catch whoever did it.

“This was our Christmas stock and we expected a lot of people to buy these items as gifts.

“It has cost me a lot of money to buy the items in and now I will have to go through insurance and restock.

“We have to display it so that people see it and want to buy it and then people know we have it. It’s been a tough year and we didn’t need this just before Christmas.”

The hair straighteners were a limited edition in gold metallic and he hoped anyone being offered such items would report it to police.

Mr Murrell said he was disappointed it took police more than 30 minutes to arrive after calling 999.

A police spokeswoman said: “All calls received are graded for a response with officers dealing with incidents which threaten life or where a crime is in progress as a priority. On this occasion police were initially called just after 6am to reports of a burglary that had occurred overnight.

“About 20 minutes later officers received a further call stating that there may still be someone inside the premises. An officer was sent immediately following this second call and they arrived a few minutes later.”

? Anyone with information about the break-ins should call Pc Lisa Vaughan on 101.