Antique vase snatched in raid on shipping magnate's home
Shipping magnate Antony Marden became the latest victim in a string of high-profile break-ins when his daughter woke to find a burglar in her room yesterday.
Shipping magnate Antony Marden became the latest victim in a string of high-profile break-ins when his daughter woke to find a burglar in her room yesterday.
An antique vase worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and US$300 and HK$500 in cash were taken in the raid at the luxury three-storey house on Middle Gap Road, The Peak, police said.
The break-in was discovered at about 5am when Marden's 26-year-old daughter, Anne, was woken by noise and saw a man ransacking her first-floor bedroom, according to police.
"She yelled at him and he ran from the bedroom," a police officer said. He then dashed into the first-floor kitchen and climbed out of a window, clambering down drainpipes and running up a hill behind the house.
Police were called but no arrests made. Officers were last night hunting a 1.7-metre-tall Chinese man in connection with the case.
Antony Marden was in the second-floor master bedroom at the time. His family is understood to have two foreign domestic helpers and a chauffeur who doubles as a security guard.
Police believe the burglar scrambled down a hillside into the backyard and pried open the kitchen window to get in.
Marden is the son of the late John Marden, who headed of the Wheelock Marden conglomerate. He hit headlines two years ago when he took delivery of the 140-foot-long space-age superyacht Adastra, which was built in Zhuhai .
Yesterday's case is the first burglary reported in the exclusive residential area since police arrested two mainland visitors on July 17. The pair were caught as they attempted to escape on a double-decker bus after a bungled raid on a four-storey house at La Hacienda in Mount Kellett Road on The Peak.
Between July 13 and 17, at least six houses on The Peak were targeted by burglars.
- Two men aged 26 and 27 were arrested yesterday afternoon after they were found with some HK$700,000 worth of valuables and break-in tools in Lyttleton Road, Mid-levels - shortly after a raid on a flat in the same road. Police believe the suspects may be linked to another four burglaries in North Point and Tsuen Wan this month.
