Richard Hammond and his family have been robbed at a Saint-Tropez villa and fear the thieves gassed them.
While staying at the luxury villa with 15 other guests, Hammond and his family were enjoying a 1920s themed getaway, complete with vintage clothing, cocktails, and dancing. However, burglars raided the villa late last month.
Speaking with Express, Richard Hammond’s wife Mindy said the family only realized they’d been robbed the following day.
“We realised something was wrong when Willow couldn’t find her watch the next day, but we thought she’d just left it somewhere, or maybe one of the teenagers had been sleepwalking in the night.
“t wasn’t until myself and the other mums were taking the kids to the beach that Richard called and said, ‘Have you looked in your purses?’. We all looked in our purses and wallets and all the cash had gone. Nothing else had been stolen.”
Mindy says that the thieves went through each bedroom and opened and closed draws to find cash to steal. As no one woke up, she believes gas may have been used in the burglary.
“I’m pretty convinced we must have been gassed or something, because they were in all of the bedrooms – they went where they wanted, into each room, opening and closing the drawers, searching through handbags etc.
“You have got to have some kind of confidence to do that and to be quite satisfied that people aren’t going to wake up.”
This isn’t the first time a celebrity has claimed to have been gassed during a robbery on the French Riviera. In 2015, ex-Formula One driver Jenson Button and his former wife said they were gassed in a similar heist.
However, in 2014, after a spate of campervan incidents, the British Royal College of Anaesthetists said said this type of gassing was “a myth.”
“It is the view of the College that it would not be possible to render someone unconscious by blowing ether, chloroform or any of the currently used volatile anaesthetic agents, through the window … without their knowledge, even if they were sleeping at the time,” reports the ABC.