WHEN Chris Lees, a 48-year-old farmer, arrived home from milking his cows to find that his house had been ransacked and that his teenage children were hiding in the bathroom, he set off in pursuit.

Three miles up the road he came across Jethro Smith, who was pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with Mr Lees’s belongings. Before he could confront the thief, Smith, 23, asked him for a lift to Exeter.

Because he had his son and daughter, aged 15 and 18, in the car, Mr Lees decided that discretion was the better part of valour and followed from a safe distance. The police had told him that it would be “some time” before they could get there.

By the time a patrol car did arrive, Smith had managed to push the barrow a further five miles in pouring rain with Mr Lees in low-speed pursuit. He denied having anything to do with the contents of the wheelbarrow. But Smith pleaded guilty at Exeter Crown Court to burglary and yesterday was given a two-year community supervision order.

Mr Lees, from Nadderwater, in Devon, said: “My neighbour ran over to me and told me that someone was in my house. I ran 200 yards back from the parlour and I saw that the front door had been smashed open.

“There was glass all over the floor and the door was wrecked. My two children had locked themselves in the bathroom upstairs because they thought the man was still inside . . . He must be the stupidest villain ever.”

Mr Lees said that he was disappointed with the response time of Devon and Cornwall Police. He said: “I rang them half a dozen times as we were following him down the road. The police told us to keep following him at a distance and promised that someone would come out and help, but two hours passed before anyone came.”

A Devon and Cornwall Constabulary spokesman said: “We were not told that the incident involved a burglary. We actually had reports of a male acting suspiciously with a wheelbarrow outside a domestic property.

“The local officers were unable to attend immediately because they were involved in a serious case elsewhere. We then received another call saying that a door had been broken down and we dispatched a unit to the address to deal with the incident.

“The helicopter was unable to attend because of the bad weather.”

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