A church reverend and pillar of the community returned home to find her house had been burgled of thousands of pounds worth of goods.

Assistant curate at All Saints’ Church in Murston, Bapchild, Tonge and Milton Regis, near Sittingbourne, Rev Lesley Jones, had a number of valuable items stolen in the broad-daylight break-in.

Between 10am and 12pm on Monday, thieves made off with a Felt mountain bike, which is white with a distinctive blue stripe on it, a MacBook Pro with a 13 inch screen, a Panasonic camcorder and a red Hewlett Packard laptop with an 11 inch screen.

Rev. Jones said the theft was all the more heartbreaking because of the number of irreplaceable photographs and documents on the computers.

“You don’t realise the impact burglary has on people’s lives until it happens to you"- Reverend Lesley Jones

She said: “You don’t realise the impact burglary has on people’s lives until it happens to you.

“The laptops have so many things on them - my daughter’s [school] course-work and photos. Stuff that cannot be replaced.”

But Rev Jones also commented on how wonderful the outpouring of support for her had been since the burglary.

She said: “But however horrible it is, people have been so kind - people I’ve not even met.

“The people on Facebook have been brilliant. I put the message up (about the break-in) and then when I looked this morning, it had been ‘shared’ 500 times.”

If you have any information on the burglary or the stolen goods, call Kent Police on 101, quoting crime reference 23-0495.

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