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Mum's shock as house camera catches man smashing her child's pumpkins
The incident happened at 5.40am on a Friday morning. - Credit: Danielle Lily
A Hatfield mum was stunned to find her four-year-old son's Halloween pumpkin had been smashed overnight.
A camera on the side of Danielle Lily's house showed that a man picked up two of their Minecraft-themed pumpkins and aggressively threw them on the ground at approximately 5.40am on Friday, 29 October.
She describes the man as wearing a ponytail and being in his 20s. There was another person who accompanied the man who can be seen in the video walking on the path in front of their home in Hatfield's Oxlease area.
"I didn't show my son the video. A kid doesn't need to know that. I told him that a fox had eaten them instead. He was devastated when he found out it was his one that had gone," Danielle, 31, said. Her son made another pumpkin, which they kept inside on Halloween.
"That video is just psychotic. It's quite clearly a kid's display," she said. "You've always got that one person who is clearly unhappy with themselves and wants to ruin it for others."
Every Halloween, Danielle's parents come over to carve pumpkins with the kids. Danielle says she won't let it stop them from doing the same tradition next year.
"We will continue to do it every year. I'm not going to let this one person spoil it." - Credit: Danielle Lily
She hasn't reported the incident to the police. But other people in the Welwyn Hatfield area have had similar things happen to them.
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One woman from Welwyn captured a man stealing her daughter's pumpkin on her house camera. When a car drove past, the person put it in the road so that it ran over it. Her daughter was "in tears".
Elsewhere in Welwyn village, a group of three people stole a pumpkin from someone's drive.
In Hatfield, two small pumpkins were taken from someone's front garden at the end of October.
Hertfordshire police said that one incident was reported yesterday. At around 8.50pm on Halloween, a group of four teenagers damaged three pumpkins that were outside a house in Bridge Road, Woolmer Green.
One of the suspects was wearing a maroon tracksuit. Officers are investigating and any witnesses or anyone with information should call the non-emergency number 101 quoting crime reference 41/85172/21.
