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Man smears excrement on saddles of NYC’s Citi Bike hire bikes

Operators alerted at 9am yesterday morning – but workers didn’t turn up to clean up the mess until 5pm

Some users of New York City’s CitiBike cycle hire scheme may wish they’d walked to work yesterday morning after CCTV footage emerged of a man smearing excrement onto the saddles of every single bike at a docking station in Manhattan’s Theater District.

The scatological scatterings at the docking station at 45th Street and 8th Avenue were discovered by the superintendent of a nearby building at 8.30am, reports the New York Daily News.

Within half an hour, he had told the scheme’s operators, NYC Bike Share, of his faecal find, but it wasn’t until 5pm that workers arrived to deal with the mess.

CCTV footage showed an unidentified man armed with a bag containing the excrement – whether it was human or something else was not reported – performing the dirty deed at 1.25am on Friday morning.

“Who could have done something like this?” said the superintendent, who wished to remain anonymous. “This is a very hot spot. Usually you don’t have bikes left at this station at all.”

He added: “Some people have taken the bikes without knowing the seats are dirty.”

An NYC Bike Share spokeswoman said the episode was an isolated incident.

Last November, a pensioner in Cambridgeshire was convicted of assault after pouring a bag of dog excrement over a cyclist she claimed had ridden too close to her on a shared use path in Trumpington.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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Leeroy_Silk | 9 years ago
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It's a disgusting act for sure. But I can't help but wonder whether the anti cyclists NIMBYs of the New Forest wouldn't have carried out an equally vile act on their proposed rental scheme bikes.

Any New Forest NIMBYs visited NYC recently?  3

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don simon fbpe | 9 years ago
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There's some sick puppies out there.

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