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Royal Air Force engineers shamed by judge over theft of Paddington Bear statue

Two British service members have admitted they broke and stole half of a statue of Paddington Bear. Prosecutors said Tuesday that Daniel Heath and William Lawrence were on a drunken night out in the town of Newbury when they tried to lift the statue from a bench and it broke in two earlier this mont

In fact, two men who had been drinking kicked and yanked on a statue of Paddington, the fictional orphaned bear who came to England from Peru, until it broke in half. Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, both 22 and engineers in the Royal Air Force, admitted in Reading Magistrates’ Court that they were responsible for the March 2 vandalism in Newbury, the hometown of Paddington creator Michael Bond. The two spirited away half of the statue in a taxi and returned to RAF Odiham base where the purloined Paddington was later found in Lawrence’s car.

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