A 6-year-old boy found a bag containing stolen jewelry and a bank card in Gouda while poking around in a ditch with a stick. The police posted a photo of the found items on social media and found the rightful owners, the Gouda police said on Facebook.
“He is always messing around with branches in the water,” the boy’s mother told the newspaper AD. “Now, he found a bag in the water.” Brent made the discovery near the Steinenburg in the Bloemendaal district of Gouda while playing with his friends, his mother said.
“Brent came home because there was a debit card in it, and he said: should we call the police? We looked in the bag and saw jewelry, a debit card, and a knife. Then we called the police. A day later, officers came to pick up the bag.”
The police immediately assumed that the items had been stolen and dumped into the ditch. And that proved to be the case when the owners came forward, the police said.
It happens a few times a year that thieves dump their loot in the water in Gouda, a police spokesperson told AD. The police do not keep track of how often they manage to return the stolen items to the owners.
“If a call does not yield any results or if we cannot find out the owner in any other way, the jewelry will be handed over to the municipality after some time,” the spokesperson said.