Driver says thugs pick out targets before swoops
MASKED youths on bikes are robbing phones from people waiting on buses, it has been claimed.
A bus driver claimed he sees the young criminals swoop every day on Dublin’s Eden Quay .
The driver, who doesn’t want to be named, told the Irish Mirror : “It’s been happening for a number of years.
“I work in the area and I see it all the time.
“It’s shocking and they seem to target women all the time, people standing there on the social media and they aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. They just go by on the push bike, take the phone and off they go.
“They would have a scarf across their face, wearing dark clothes, the bike would have no lights.
“How I notice them all the time is they go up and down the Quay picking out the people on their phones and the most expensive phones before going in for the kill.
“The other day I saw a woman waiting on a bus outside O’reilly’s chemist on Eden Quay, and your man spots her on the phone, goes past twice, gets up on the footpath snatches the phone and he was gone.”
One Dublin commuter named Aimee said she has been targeted twice by the thieves.
The young woman from the southside had her new €800 Samsung S8 snatched in mid- October before she was robbed again in November.
She told Dublin Live: “In the space of a month I was robbed twice by guys on bikes.
“The first time I was near the Phoenix Park and the second was on Talbot Street.
“I would say the two that did it were aged between 17 and 23.
“They are opportunists, they know well what they are doing.
“I don’t feel safe walking around and I never take my phone out in public anymore.”
The Irish Mirror contacted gardai but no one was available for comment.