Burglars targeting Peak homes empty for Christmas holidays

Police will step up patrols and surveillance on The Peak after three luxury houses, all on Mount Kellett Road, were targeted since Christmas Eve.

The latest break-in was discovered at about 11.15am yesterday when a chauffeur, 45, found his employer's three-storey house had been ransacked while the tenant, a Russian businessman, was in Russia.

Police said intruders broke the window in the second-floor toilet to climb into the house and searched all the bedrooms.

"The tenant is not in Hong Kong so it is not known what belongings have been stolen," a police spokeswoman said. Detectives from the Central police district are investigating.

Another house was burgled on Friday while its tenants were travelling aboard and on Christmas Eve, an intruder fled empty-handed when he tried to climb into the first-floor bedroom of a house and activated a security alarm. A police source said the tenants were having dinner on the ground floor at the time.

Since Christmas Eve, police have received at least two separate reports of a suspicious man wandering on the same street between 7pm and 9pm. He had left by the time police arrived.