Expensive equipment last seen with ‘blonde’.

A two-way communications radio, snatched from the street in Honiton after being dropped by a carnival director, was probably dumped in the River Gissage.

Honiton and District Carnival will now have to pay for a replacement.

Witnesses reported seeing a young blonde woman running off with the radio after it fell to the ground while Robb Sleeman was collecting road cones following the October 22 procession.

A member of the public read our appeal for the radio to be returned last week and told police they had seen it in the river, near Water Babies at the bottom of High Street.

The Midweek Herald mounted a search of the stream in a bid to retrieve the item, but torrential rain had turned the waters into a raging torrent. We scoured the river bank from High Street to Oaklea and found no trace of the radio.

Disappointed carnival chairman Bill Austin said whoever picked it up “just didn’t think”. “The radio was on loan and now we will have to pay to replace it.

“That is about �140 that won’t be going to charity this year.”