By Jessica Anstice
Unknown offenders stole a handbag from a woman visiting Fountain Gate Shopping Centre before stealing her car from the shopping centre’s top level car park near the Village Cinemas entrance.
At about 2.40pm on February 2 Chloe White received three phone calls from a private number explaining that her handbag had been picked up accidentally and it would be returned shortly with all of its contents.
“The first time they called me they said ‘Hey Chloe, I have got your purse and your keys, my son picked it up so I am coming back to give it to you’,” Ms White said.
The second time they asked Ms White where she was and the third time they asked to meet her near the bank, “I’m in a blue Swift, I’m parked, I’m at Coles carpark, I’m coming down,” the unknown person said over the phone.
Ms White said the unknown person sounded ‘genuine’ and ‘apologetic’ on the phone.
“I didn’t think anything suspicious of it, I felt excited that someone would be so nice to give me my purse back,” she said.
Two hours after the phone call, Ms White went to the carpark where she had parked her 2017 blue Holden Astra sedan to find that it too, had been stolen.
“My heart was so broken, I was in tears,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe anyone would do this to me, and lead me on like they did.”
