Queen Elizabeth dealt with a security breach around 2:00 a.m. on July 10, when a man jumped the gates and entered Buckingham Palace. While the man reportedly was trying to get inside, the doors were all locked so he was unable to do so. Eventually, police were called to the scene. Throughout the ordeal, the Queen was apparently asleep, according to Express .
Since the breach, there have been rumblings that the perpetrator was attempting to recreate the security breach from 1982. This is what a royal insider noted about the details.
“This intruder got into the Palace almost 37 years to the day since Michael Fagan ended up getting inside the Queen’s bedroom. There is a genuine theory and very real fear that he could have been launching a copycat operation.”
“The police eventually detained him under the mental health act, but they have to ask some serious questions,” they added, adding that police had to question also how the breach was even possible.
At the same time, everyone is glad that the doors were all locked this time. Because on July 9, 1982, a man named Michael Fagan broke into the Queen’s bedroom by scaling the walls. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Queen’s panic button failed her. And then, she contacted the palace switchboard, but the operator thought the call from the Queen was a practical joke. Eventually, she got the attention of a butler, Paul Whybrew, who intervened and got Fagan to leave the room.
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Because there was a prior break-in, some sounded surprised that another man was able to scale a gate.
“How is it possible all these years later that someone can climb the fence and get right inside the grounds without being stopped immediately? What about heat censors and CCTV? The Queen’s safety should be paramount.”
It’s hard to know for sure, but the incident may prompt the security detail to review their protocol. Plus, the latest break-in sounds like a potentially mental-health related incident, while the Fagan incident involved a bet.
According to Rick Steves , Fagan was prompted to break in because he heard the Queen was at Buckingham Palace. He bet his seven friends five pounds each and said the would get into the palace. The wall that he climbed was 20 feet tall. The incident was notable because nobody had ever breached the palace in such a way in 800 years. Little did anyone realize right away, that Fagan had previously broken into the palace and scared a maid. Nobody believed the maid, however.
