Amy Childs, the former The Only Way Is Essex star, was left 'heartbroken' after her £1.7million Essex mansion was ransacked by robbers while she and her family were away on holiday, a source has claimed.
Childs, 36, is said to have returned home to find the property 'completely trashed' after thieves broke in during the family's getaway.
A source said: 'Amy and her family returned from holiday to find that thieves had broken into her home and completely trashed the place. She's absolutely heartbroken. She is just grateful that she and the kids were away when it happened, because it would have been terrifying if they had been there when the burglars came.'
'She can't even bear to think about that but it's still left her shaken. At the moment, she isn't sure exactly what's been taken as the place is totally wrecked and police have been there along with forensics. It's a total nightmare and really freaked her out,' the source added.
A representative for Childs confirmed the burglary to The Sun, saying: 'No one was hurt which is the main thing. The police are all over it.' The Daily Mail has approached Childs for comment.
Childs and her husband Billy Delbosq, 43, are parents to twin toddlers Billy and Millie, two. She also has an eight-year-old daughter, Polly, with her ex Bradley Wright, and a seven-year-old son, Ritchie, with her former partner, a business leader also called Ritchie.
The break-in makes Childs' mansion the latest celebrity home to be targeted by thieves, after properties belonging to fellow reality star Megan McKenna and to actress Michelle Keegan and her husband Mark Wright were also burgled.
Megan McKenna's Decision to Leave the UK
Childs' burglary came just hours after McKenna, also a TOWIE alumna, revealed she had decided to move to Germany after her former UK home was broken into by machete-wielding intruders.
McKenna, 33, splits her time between the UK and Germany, where she has been based since she began dating her footballer husband, Oliver Burke, in 2023. Burke previously played for Werder Bremen before signing for Union Berlin last year. The couple share a 22-month-old son, Landon.
Speaking on the Great Company With Jamie Laing podcast, McKenna said she decided to relocate to Germany after a traumatic burglary at her UK home two years ago. 'I don't talk about this with a lot of people because I was worried and scared at the time because people were in prison for it, and when there was a trial going on, so I wasn't able to talk about it,' she said.
'I was robbed really badly in my own home. It scared me so much to be in the UK and to live in the UK on my own, because obviously Ollie's in Germany.'
McKenna explained that after a holiday together, Burke had to return to Germany, leaving her alone in the house with her dog. She fell asleep around 11pm and woke to find the house 'shaking'.
Masked Men With Machetes
'I was such a disorientated mess. I was like, 'What?' And then I just knew that it was happening to me, and I was like, 'Oh my God,'' she said. 'I get goose pimples now thinking about it. They were inside my house, but I lock my bedroom door every night because I always worry about something happening to me when I'm on my own.'
'The next thing I know, my mirror has come off my wall, and they're hacking a hole through my wall with a baseball bat. They're three masked men with machetes and baseball bats, and they managed to hack a hole in my wall because it was a fake wall going onto my dressing room, linked to my bedroom,' she recalled.
McKenna said she called the police, who arrived within minutes, though it felt like 'the longest seven minutes I've ever experienced in my entire life'. Officers told her not to speak to the intruders, but she said she could hear them hacking through the wall and feared for her dog's safety.
'I said, 'if I don't go and talk to them and ask them what they want, they're going to come in and kill my dog,'' she said. McKenna, who was naked at the time and had cut her foot, said she approached the men herself. 'I went over to them. I was naked. I was talking to this man in a balaclava, and he grabbed my hand and he took jewellery off of me. Like I actually was holding hands with the robber, and they had a conversation outside the wall, and they made a phone call.'
'I was shaking. I'd cut my foot. There was blood everywhere. It was like a bloody murder scene. And then I'm standing naked, and they just left with nothing, with nothing else,' she added, saying her home had been 'obviously targeted'.
McKenna said the ordeal left her feeling unsafe in her own home, and came while she was going through IVF treatment that led to the birth of Landon. She said she had told police at the time that she could not go through a trial. The intruders were later caught and convicted, she said, but were released a year later. 'They're just roaming the roads,' she said.
