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news
Leith Walk attempted bike theft (screenshot via Marion Bell, Twitter)Thieves attempting to steal bike using angle grinder thwarted by passing locals
A pair of hooded bike thieves were thwarted while attempting to steal a nurse’s bike using an angle grinder on a busy street in Edinburgh.
A video, posted on Twitter yesterday, shows the two thieves trying to cut through a bike lock using the power tool, with sparks flying, in plain view of passers-by.
This is Leith walk in broad daylight. Unbelievable.
My colleague's bike saved by some passers-by's intervention. She left her bike for less than an hour. The passers-by guarded the bike until her return. Some awful people however some good people too. #Edinburgh #cycling pic.twitter.com/cnruREQYXI— Marion Bell (@marionjane007) February 26, 2022
The bike, which belongs to Cordelia, a nurse in the city, was chained to a metal fence on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk. The thieves were cutting through the lock from the opposite side of the railings on which the bike was located – presumably to later walk around and casually ‘unlock’ the bike before riding away with it.
However, the duo’s illicit actions were abruptly ended when two locals confronted them. While one of the thieves appeared willing to continue with his day’s activity – turning around to recommence using the angle grinder even as he was harangued by the passer-by – they eventually both scarpered.
According to Cordelia’s colleague, who posted the footage, the nurse had left the bike for less than an hour as she visited a nearby shop to get a manicure. The locals who caught the thieves guarded the bike until her return.
> Thieves use angle grinder to steal Trek bike locked outside busy shopping centre
"It was pretty outrageous,” Cordelia said. “On Thursday afternoon I had locked my bike to the railing on Leith Walk at the opening of Orchardfield.
“I went in to get a manicure and when I went back to the bike, there were three people there with one of them on the phone to the police. I was very lucky they got there when they did.”
The extent of Cordelia’s luck was evident in a photo she shared after the incident, which showed how close the thieves got to cutting through the lock.
It is not the first time a gang of bike thieves using angle grinders has been caught on camera. In 2020, footage emerged on social media of a bike thief lunging a tool at a bystander who tried to intervene as the suspect cut the lock on a Brompton in Hackney, while last year a London cyclist confronted motorbike thieves using a similar tool to cut through locks.
> Another bike thief caught on film using angle grinder
In November, footage of a gang stealing an £3,000 e-bike outside a shopping centre in South London resulted in the victim receiving a “possible ID” for one of the suspects, who was known to the police.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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I've posted before about being 69, lifelong cyclist as my main transport, much of it in, through, under, over London and how it's bicycles that...
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I hope you're all checking your insurance policies, helmets, test certificates and road tax, it's the 2024 round-up...
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200 people out of a close by population of how many? Just build it and stop being a wuss
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To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
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The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
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They don't make them like they used to
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Thanks for using my picture of chocolate in your opening picture. The original can be found here, chocolate! | LongitudeLatitude | Flickr.
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Fair comments. I'll put my hands up and say I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. ¡Feliz navidad! Here's a pic for the season of goodwill.
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16 comments
Battery technology has evolved so much, battery powered power tools are easy to carry around plus the cost of them are so low. About £30 in Lidl.
No self-respecting grafter would think of using anything less than DeWalt...
Do my eyes decieve me or are the theives on the wrong side of the gate.
I guess they planned to lift it over the fence.
Plus easy gettaway if (as) it went wrong.
Interesting tactic. Maybe a good site for a bait bike.
It's a quick run round the block too get to the main road.
The article says
Would be hilarious* if they did that, walked round and someone had already walked off with it.
I'm just pleased that people intervened - I suspect only because the bloke with the angle grinder was on the opposite side of the fence...
*Not hilarious.
Is that really Edinburgh, didn't sound like the boy was from Edinburgh ?
Welcome to the 21st century. Not everyone "sounds" like your ill-conceived stereotypes.
Plus it states exactly where the incident occured, which means you can look it up for yourself in 30 seconds on Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/XNm1Deid63z36NrA7
Why is it an ill conceived stereotype ?
'Cos "city" innit? Or rather - not only is it a city but a capital city, in Europe (well...), and you'll find a mix of people everywhere, more or less.
But well spotted for noticing he didn't say "hoots mon" or "och ay the noo". Or maybe - by careful study (e.g. Irving Welsh novels) you'd even detected an East coast / West coast linguistic difference? For some lovely sounds I can recommend Jackie Kay - although I can confide that she's not really from round here. She grew up in Bishopbriggs. (Although bonus point apparently she was born in Edinburgh).
Having lived in Leith many years ago my memories are that the proud Leither takes great umbridge to being referred to as an Edinburgher 😉 So our friend is right in questioning if it was Edinburgh and as this incident occurred north of the Boundary Bar he would be correct.
Anyway. At least confusion was avoided by the protagonists not been told to "gonne no"
Good point, I thought the commentor wasn't local enough but maybe they were too local!
But wait - that would mean they'd have to have know those boys, if they knew it was one or the other place ("didn't sound like the boy was from Edinburgh"). I think we have someone who has information - maybe even one culprit!
You may be right there.
Good reason to have a folding bike