A New Zealand burglar gave himself up when he called police to tell them that he had just bumped into a dead body hanging in the darkness of a house he had broken into.

The 26-year-old man had such a fright that police decided not to charge him for the break-in at the house in the Fairfield suburb of Hamilton – especially after deciding that but for the burglar’s petty crime the man’s body might not have been discovered for days.

‘He got a heck of a fright, that’s for sure,’ said Senior Sergeant Freda Grace of Hamilton Police.