Christmas presents stolen from Doncaster church
Christmas presents donated to a charity for deprived children have been stolen from a church in Doncaster.
Thieves took 12 shoe boxes containing donated gifts and electrical items from Hexthorpe Methodist Church last week.
The church had collected the presents from the congregation as part of Operation Christmas Child in which it sends some 200 shoe boxes overseas.
The Reverend John Hartley said 12 children who would have got a Christmas gift for the first time, now will not.
Mr Hartley said the church in Urban Road also sustained damage during the break-in.
"But the material things, the electrical goods and even the damage, are secondary," he said.
"People have made these shoe boxes in order to give them to children who probably have never been given a Christmas present at all in their lives.
"That's the most disturbing feature of this."