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Nanaimo woman has same bike stolen twice in one week

Bike stolen for a second time on the owner’s way back home from the police station
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A Nanaimo woman can ride her bike once again after having it stolen two times in less than a week.

According to the Nanaimo RCMP, the first theft took place on Oct. 1 when the bike was taken from outside the woman’s home on Harewood Road. Although the theft was not reported to the police, the woman did post a photo of the stolen bike on a Facebook group that the RCMP monitor.

Const. Gary O’Brien, Nanaimo RCMP spokesman, said on Oct. 4, members with the RCMP’s bike unit noticed a man with the stolen bike downtown and seized it. He said officers then reached out to the woman who picked up the bike the following day.

“She was happy as ever,” O’Brien said.

Unfortunately, the woman’s joy didn’t last too long. She had the same bike stolen from the back of her truck in downtown Nanaimo shortly after leaving the police station, before she had even made it home.

“Before she went home she ran some errands. She didn’t have her bike locked and put it in the back of her truck,” he said. “Sure enough, it was stolen.”

The woman asked for assistance from several people nearby, offering them a small finder’s fee, according to O’Brien, who said the woman was reunited with her bike for a second time later that day. He said the chances of having a bike stolen, recovered and returned twice in one week are virtually zero.

“It doesn’t happen,” he said. “Seriously, it just doesn’t happen.”

O’Brien said between one to five bikes are reported stolen in Nanaimo every day and that the success rate of getting a stolen bike back in one piece is less than 15 per cent.

“It’s an epidemic,” he said.

To read an expanded version of this article, click here.



nicholas.pescod@nanaimobulletin.com

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