On three consecutive days last month, about $150 went missing from schoolbags, which students must store in the hat room during recess. Harry was a victim - he lost $18 - and other students had cash and bus passes nicked.
Harry, 11, sprang into action.
“The teachers said ‘wait, wait, wait’ and they weren’t taking any action,” he said.
“I decided to act because I was annoyed that they had robbed a lot of classes, and a lot of people were missing $20.”
Harry drew on know-how acquired from hours spent glued to the History Channel, his favourite program being a documentary about Vietcong-made traps in the Vietnam War.
On the fourth day, he placed a mouse trap with a $5 note attached in his school bag during recess.
He had squirted the device’s main bar and metal fittings with green food colouring, cutting a small hole in the note and securing it on the bait hook with sticky tape, so that the thief would have to wrestle with it, thereby setting off the spring and getting hit with the coloured bar.
To his surprise, the thieves took the bait and - after he spread the word among classmates - a witch-hunt began.
