By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-03-28 05:32:21 | Updated at 2025-03-31 04:41:57
2 days ago
Australian police rushed to a house in the suburbs of Melbourne after receiving a report from a woman about an attempted break-in, but little did they expect they
would
be confronted with a furry intruder.
The woman
, known as Emily, made an emergency call to the Victoria police after hearing what sounded like a person trying to break into her house in South Yarra.
Emily’s barking dog first alerted her to sounds coming from her back door at 11.30pm on March 26.
“I heard scratching and my sliding glass door was being rattled. I was absolutely petrified,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne Drive.
In a statement, the Victoria police said its officers rushed to the scene and were shocked to realise that the intruder was still trying to access the back door despite their arrival.
Expecting to locate “a crook in the act”, the officers were surprised to find a koala “peering up at them from a dog bed beside the back door”, the police said in a March 27 statement.
“A search of the backyard soon confirmed the koala was their person of interest and had acted alone.
“Apart from being a confirmed bed thief, the marsupial was released without charge,” the police added.
Emily said one of the police officers asked if she had a pet koala.
“I said no, and then I saw it - oh my god, it was the ‘intruder’,” she said.
Senior Constable Brittany Darvell, who was one of the officers at the scene, said it was “definitely a shock” when she found the koala.
“We were definitely ready for something sinister to happen, and then to see the koala was definitely a sigh of relief,” she told 3AW radio station.
Describing the koala as “enormous”, Emily said: “It tried to climb the fence but it couldn’t make it right over so it jumped down and hit the ground with a thud, it was like a rock.”
She said the officers then shooed the marsupial to the backyard where it eventually climb up to a nearby tree.
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