Three men, armed with a handgun and a hammer, ransacked the house in Withington, Manchester, and escaped with jewellery and cash, worth about £800. What they didn’t realise was that they had been caught on camera by a home closed-circuit television system installed by the householder, Jim Torrance, who owns a security firm.

He hopes that the images will help to catch the robbers, who struck last Friday evening. Detectives are analysing the pictures in an effort to identify them. Mr Torrance, 53, said his wife Elaine, 49, was in the bathroom when the gang entered the house through the back door and mounted the stairs.

“I’d been working in my garage and I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “It was a totally unreal experience and very frightening for Elaine, who they caught in her nightie. They broke into my son James’s room and stole £600 he was keeping in a safe to buy equipment for his hockey team in Prague. He’s only 17 and it’s cheaper for them to buy it over there. He was supposed to fly out this week, but now they’ll have to go without.”

Mrs Torrance activated a panic alarm connected to the police station as the men were leaving and also alerted her husband. Mr Torrance, a father of seven, added: “They were probably only in the house for three minutes and the police were here within five. It was lucky none of the kids were in, or they might have been hurt.”

The property is guarded with three closed-circuit television cameras, an alarm, motion sensors in every room and a panic button in the bedroom, but the unlocked door circumvented all that.

“The door was left open because there are so many kids coming and going all the time,” Mr Torrance said.

“CCTV is all about publicity. If somebody has a hood over their face there is not a lot you can do. Hopefully, somebody will recognise these people in the pictures and we will be able to catch them.”

A police spokeswoman said: “Investigations are ongoing. The offenders are believed to be three males, but it is too soon to give further details.”

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