One-legged shoplifter caught on CCTV
Just 24 hours after installing security cameras in their sports store Raylee Blair and David Hartley caught their first thief – a one-legged man on a mobility scooter.
On Monday afternoon Blair and Hartley, who own Magnum Sports Stratford in central Taranaki, decided to watch their first day’s footage after noticing they were a few jackets short.
‘‘I said to David ‘oh did you sell a whole lot of these? That’s cool’, and he said ‘no’,’’ Blair said.
‘‘He said ‘oh my god we’ve got a camera now, this is awesome’.
‘‘So I went back, I didn’t think anything of it, I thought we’ve probably just forgotten what we’ve sold but no. Sure enough, there it was and I just about fell over backwards.’’
The footage shows a man pull up outside the store’s front door about 4.30pm. He gets off, revealing he only has one leg, and helps himself to about $350 worth of clothes on the outside rack.
The man then gets back on his scooter and takes off down the main street of Stratford.
Blair said they uploaded the video to their Facebook page at around 6pm that evening.
‘‘Within 10 minutes – that’s all it took – we had name, address, phone number,’’ she said. ‘‘He’s not exactly inconspicuous.’’
On Tuesday morning Blair called into the store before she went to the police station to report the theft and Hartley had news for her; their thief had called. ‘‘He said to David: ‘I don’t know how to say this, I’m the guy on the video who took your stuff. I feel really bad; I was really cold. I’ve never done it before; I just needed some clothes,’ and we felt like the worst people, we’ve just spread this all over the internet,’’ Blair said.
However, when Blair spoke to the police she was shocked to find out the man was lying.
‘‘The police had gone around there and apparently found a goldmine of stolen goods, from everywhere,’’ she said.
The police returned the goods that had come from Magnum Sports.
‘‘They said ‘this is your stuff that was stolen on Monday’, and I go ‘no it wasn’t, there’s one item in there that was stolen on Monday, the rest of this is stuff that’s been going missing for weeks’,’’ Blair said.
Blair said the video was one of the most trending videos in Taranaki, had made it all the way to the United Kingdom and had nearly 36,000 views by midday on Wednesday.
Constable Nathan Hessell said the man was arrested on Tuesday morning and is being charged with theft.
He will appear in court on Tuesday May 8.