On your bike! Moment passersby chase off brazen thieves using an angle grinder to steal nurse’s bicycle from railings on a busy Edinburgh street
- Two hooded men attempted to steal a nurse’s bicycle using an angle grinder
- The pair spotted the bike secured to railings in Leith Walk, Edinburgh
- Members of the public stood up against the would-be thieves who ran off
This is the moment a group of strangers stood up to stop a pair of hooded thieves from stealing a £3,000 e-bike owned by an NHS nurse.
Hannah Jonathan from Edinburgh chained her Trek electric bike to railings on Leith Walk in the city on Tuesday, February 22 when she went for a manicure.
After leaving the bicycle chained with a £70 d-lock to a railing, it was targeted by a pair of thieves equipped with a battery powered angle grinder.
Members of the public stood up to a pair of brazen thieves who attempted to steal NHS nurse Hannah Jonathan’s £3,000 electric bicycle after it was locked onto railings in Leith Walk, Edinburgh
The thieves used an angle grinder to cut through Ms Jonathan’s £70 gold standard D Lock
After being confronted by members of the public, the two thieves retreat
The footage shows sparks flying as the thieves attempt to cut through Ms Jonathan’s lock.
Luckily, several members of the public step forward and challenge the men who run off when confronted.
Some of the bystanders stand with the bike until Ms Jonathan returns.
She told MailOnline: ‘When I came out there was a rainbow, like from the Proclaimers song Sunshine on Leith, so I took out my phone to take a photograph.
‘That’s when I saw everyone. One person was speaking on the phone and there was a Polish woman who had been in the shop, she was holding onto my bike.
‘Someone had called the police and they handed me their phone so I could talk to them.’
Ms Jonathan said someone showed her the video of the two men attempting to cut through the lock of her bike.
‘I have a gold-standard lock on my bike otherwise I wouldn’t be able to insure it. But they were able to cut through the lock using an angle grinder. In another few seconds, they would have been away with my bike, if it wasn’t for the people who stood up to protect it.’
Ms Jonathan said she went into a friend’s bike shop to buy a new lock which is supposed to protect against angle grinder attack.
She added: ‘This happened last week during rush hour. This is a very busy part of the city and these guys were absolutely brazen.
‘If it wasn’t for the strangers who confronted the pair, my bike would have been stolen.’
In July 2021, another gang of thieves attempted to steal a £13,000 motorbike from a street in Hackney, east London.
Again, the gang were equipped with battery-powered angle grinders which rapidly cut through any locks.
The same type of tool is also used by thieves who target catalytic converters on car exhaust systems.
The astonishing video was captured by a semi-professional cyclist who gave his name as James Richards, who lives nearby.
A cyclist who gave his name as James Richards told MailOnline he confronted a masked man wielding an angle grinder who ‘came at me with it’ on a street in Spitalfields, City of London
The dramatic theft however ended in failure when bystanders pushed the would-be thief and bike over as he tried to ride it away before calling police on them (a photo taken by James of the bike with the thief’s white Nike trainer). It is believed City of London police are investigating the incident
The 34-year-old was walking home from cycle training when he spotted the group of men surrounding a bike parking bay in the Spitalfields area of the city.
‘I was walking back from training and came across a white van and two mopeds parked in the road outside Tracey Emin’s old house,’ he told MailOnline.
Mr Richards said it soon became clear that the men, two of whom were on mopeds, were planning to cut through the bike’s three locks and then load it into a white van they had waiting nearby.
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