Postie arrested on suspicion of dumping sackfuls of mail in Quorn

A postman has been arrested after a driver spotted a man dumping thousands of letters near a country lane.

The Leicester Mercury understands about 20 bin bags, stuffed with 2,500 pieces of undelivered mail, were discovered in Kinchley Lane, Quorn.

Police said a 24-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the incident near Swithland Reservoir, on August 27. A 25-year-old bar manager from Birstall called police after he spotted a man throwing bin bags over a wall when driving home from work at about 11pm.

The witness, who did not want to be named, said: "I was driving past the reservoir when I came round the corner and there was a car blocking the road.

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"In the headlights I could see a man with bin bags in his hand, which he threw over the wall at the side of the road."

The driver jotted down the registration number of the man's car and called the police.

He said: "I went to look at the bags, but being a bit of a wimp I did not want to look in them – I guess I was thinking anything could be in there.

"Armed police turned up – two of them – and I shone the torch while they looked.

"We found four more bags with stacks of letters tightly bound together with elastic bands."

He said police officers told him the man was arrested at 2am the following day, and that after a search, Royal Mail revealed it had found 15 more bags dumped in the area.

Royal Mail spokesman Heulyn Gwyn Davies confirmed a postman had been arrested for allegedly dumping mail. He said: "Royal Mail has a zero-tolerance approach to any dishonesty and that stance is shared by the overwhelming majority of postmen and women, who are honest and hardworking and who do all they can to protect the mail and deliver it safely.

"We will always seek to prosecute the tiny minority of people who abuse their position of trust.

"Royal Mail customers should be confident in our services and systems, but where we are alerted to problems, either through our own stringent checks or from information supplied by our customers, we always take decisive action to investigate."

The Royal Mail refused to say where the post was destined for or where the postman worked, but said that all recovered mail would be sent to the rightful recipient with a covering letter "as soon as possible".

A spokeswoman for Leicestershire Police said officers arrested a 24-year-old man as part of an investigation into the theft of a quantity of letters which ought to have been delivered by Royal Mail.

She said: "The arrested man has been released on police bail pending further inquiries to be carried out by Royal Mail."