A charity shop manager has spoken of her distress after two designer handbags worth £1,500 were taken by thieves.

Two Gucci bags worth £850 each were taken in a shoplifting incident at the Cancer Research shop in Marlow’s High Street during the Late Night Shopping event last Thursday (December 6).

Shop manager Hannah Ayers said she was serving customers at the till when she noticed a disturbance where the bags were kept in a glass cabinet.

She said: “The shop was completely full and I was serving customers at the front.

“They created a distraction by dropping the shoes off the top of the cabinet. I said I would come over to put them back and when I got there, the man ran off pretty quickly.

“I realised around 30 seconds after it had happened.

“They must have planned to push down on the glass cabinet door and take them while the shop was full.”

Ms Ayres told the Marlow Free Press she was left feeling distressed after the incident and the shop lost business after it was forced to close because of the incident.

She said: “It ended up ruining the whole evening for us.

“The worst thing is you just don’t know what to do. Luckily the police were on duty that night so we told them what happened.”

Officers were called at around 7.15pm.

The man has been described as white and wearing a dark brown/green jumper with a shirt underneath.

Anyone with information or who sees the bags (pictured) being sold elsewhere is being urged to call police on 101 quoting reference 43180374511.