\n Police officers were alerted on May 3 after the statue was reported missing from its bench in Guildhall Square.\n<\/p>\n
\n Following enquiries, Paddington was located at East Park.\n<\/p>\n
\n A spokesperson for Southampton Police said: \u201cHe was recovered safely and, as you can see, was given a police escort while arrangements were made for his return.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThankfully, he was found in one piece – and he certainly needed a marmalade sandwich after his ordeal.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhile we know Paddington is a much-loved character and this may raise a smile, damage to public property is a serious offence.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe statue brings joy to residents, visitors, families and businesses in the city centre, and it is disappointing to see him targeted again so soon after recent repairs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The incident comes not long after the statue was previously targeted by vandals, who removed it from its bench in Guildhall Square.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police say enquiries are ongoing and officers are reviewing CCTV.\n<\/p>\n
\n The spokesperson added: \u201cAnyone who witnessed what happened, or who has information that could assist our investigation, is asked to contact us quoting 44260207135.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cPlease look after Paddington. He is a bear of very good standing in our city.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police officers were alerted on May 3 after the statue was reported missing from its bench in Guildhall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-565100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}