Police are investigating a burglary minutes from Prince William and Princess Kate’s house and within the Windsor Castle estate.
A pick-up truck and a quad bike were taken in the night time raid through the closest exit to William and Kate’s Adelaide Cottage.
The Sun, which broke the story, reported the couple and their three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, were thought to be in bed asleep at the time.
Thames Valley Police said in a statement released to Newsweek: “At around 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, October 13, we received a report of burglary at a property on Crown Estate land near to the A308 in Windsor.
“Offenders entered a farm building and made off with a black Isuzu pick-up and a red quad bike. They then made off towards the Old Windsor/Datchet area.
“No arrests have been made at this stage and an investigation is ongoing.”
Samir Hussein/WireImage and Chris Jackson/Getty Images
The break in, which The Sun reported was by masked burglars, took place last month a few days after Kate’s first community visit since finishing her cancer treatment.
In a March video message, Kate announced “cancer had been present” at the point she had abdominal surgery in January.
She began chemotherapy in late-February before attending her first royal event in June for Trooping the Colour, King Charles III‘s birthday parade.
However, she undertook her first meeting out in the community on October 10 when she visited Southport to speak to family of three girls killed in a stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.
It was three days later that the burglary happened, and a couple of days before Prince William tried his hand at football during an NFL Foundation event in London on October 15.
This is not the first time Windsor has been the scene of a security incident after Jaswant Singh Chail broke into the grounds of Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow on Christmas Day, in 2021.
Chail, who viewed himself as a Sith, the villains in the Star Wars universe, later said: “I’m here to kill the Queen [Elizabeth II].”
He was jailed for nine years by Mr Justice Hilliard, who said: “The defendant harbored homicidal thoughts which he acted on before he became psychotic.
“His intention was not just to harm or alarm the sovereign—but to kill her.”
Jack Royston is Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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