An officer in Staffordshire, central England, labeled the thieves “the world’s unluckyest thieves” and compared them to the ill-fated crooks in the movie “Home Alone”.
He said one of the two sat by mistake on his phone and called 999, the UK’s emergency number, allowing law enforcement officials to hear the ongoing crime and finally hear his colleagues arrest the pair.
“I think we just arrested the most unlucky thieves in the world,” wrote Chief Inspector John Owen on Twitter.
“While committing a theft, one of the clumsy thieves accidentally sat on his phone and dialed 999,” he wrote.
“We (got) a call detailing all their antics to the point where we heard our patrols arrive to arrest them.”
Adding insult to injury, Owen included a gif of the character “Home Alone” Marv, which proves comically unsuitable for a life of crime in the Christmas film Macaulay Culkin.
In 2016, two equally unhappy thieves robbed a McDonald’s in France – only to discover that 11 armed members of an elite paramilitary force were eating inside.