London: Masked burglars stole farm vehicles from King Charles III’s sprawling Windsor Castle estate, which is also home to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s family cottage, British police confirmed on Monday. According to a report in The Sun newspaper, two men scaled a 1.8 meter fence on the night of October 13 and used a stolen truck to break through a security gate while the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children George, Charlotte and Louis, slept at their home in Adelaide Cottage on the property.

The two masked burglars then fled in a pick-up truck and a quad which were stored in a barn. “At around 11.45pm on Sunday 13 October we received a report of a burglary at a property on the Crown Estate, off the A308 in Windsor,” Thames Valley Police said in a statement.

“The offenders entered a farm building and left in a black Isuzu pick-up and a red quad. They then drove off towards the Old Windsor/Datchet area. No arrests have been made at this stage and an investigation is ongoing” , the statement said.

Although Buckingham Palace did not comment on the reports, sources indicated that the King and Queen Camilla were not in their castle residence at the time. However, all members of the royal family have their own special police protection and there is not believed to have been any immediate danger to any of the royals who were at the Windsor estate, about 40km west of London.

The 15,800-acre royal estate includes working farms, conservation areas, Windsor Great Park and famous royal landmarks such as Windsor Castle, a popular tourist attraction. Last month’s break-in marks another breach of security at the grounds after a British Sikh man scaled a fence at Windsor Castle armed with a loaded crossbow and claimed he wanted to kill Queen Elizabeth II in December 2021.

Jaswant Singh Chail has since been sentenced to nine years in prison for treason, possessing an offensive weapon and making death threats. Chail claimed he wanted to “assassin” the late monarch as revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, according to a social media video that surfaced soon after his arrest.

(With agency contributions)

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