Burglars may have used sleeping gas to rob F1 driver Jenson Button of more than $380K
Burglars possibly used some form of sleeping gas to put Jenson Button and his wife asleep in a jewelry robbery this week, according to the F1 driver's spokesperson.
The spokesperson said Button, the 2009 F1 world champion, and his wife were robbed at a villa in Saint-Tropez, France. The burglars allegedly made off with jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Two men broke into the property whilst they all slept and stole a number of items of jewellery including, most upsettingly, Jessica's engagement ring," a spokesperson said via Eurosport.
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The engagement ring is reportedly worth $387,000.
"The police have indicated that this has become a growing problem in the region with perpetrators going so far as to gas their proposed victims through the air conditioning units before breaking in."
police have not commented directly about the idea that the couple could have been gassed. An operations director for a British security firm said he wasn't surprised about the allegations that gas was used to make the Buttons stay asleep.
"The term they used to use is chloroform attacks, but it's not actually chloroform, it's another anaesthetic-based gas," the security director said.
The easiest way of introducing the gas into a house would be through its air conditioning intake vents outside the property, he said.
"These properties are big: they normally have a huge system with a bank of intake fans situated away from the property, behind some bushes somewhere, which makes them ideal for burglars.
"We have to try and prevent access to those fans."
Formula 1 is currently in the midst of its summer break. Points leader Lewis Hamilton has been photographed partying in Barbados.
Button has struggled on track this year as his McLaren team switched to Honda, which returned to the sport in 2015. The team has been plagued with reliability and speed issues.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
