James Currie first noticed his $700 bike was missing at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday night.
He decided to go on Craigslist, just on the off-chance that someone might have posted it on there for sale. “To my surprise it was,” he says, “so I contacted the guy, he left his number on there and I called up and said ‘hey I want to buy the bike’, tried to play it cool and calm, made a meet that day, he said ‘call me in the morning’, so I called him this morning.”
Currie says they made a deal to meet up at 2 p.m. on Thursday. The bike was up for sale for $150.
That is when he called the Vancouver Police Department and told them he had set up a meeting with the alleged thief.
“I met him on Davie and Thurlow,” says Currie, “showed up, girl came out with the bike, did the whole spiel, and I asked her ‘oh can I ride the bike?’ because I was just going to try and ride off with it, and she’s like ‘no you can’t ride the bike, you can’t sit on it either, because we had another bike get stolen and we don’t want it to get stolen.”
Currie says a man showed up at that point and right after, two Vancouver Police officers also showed up.
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“And that was the end of it,” he says.
The alleged thieves also repaired a puncture Currie had gotten a few days earlier, and put a light on the bike. “I actually came out on top with a free repair,” he says.
Brian Montague from the Vancouver Police Department confirms the bike was recovered from two people and returned to the owner. No charges have been laid in the case, but one of the people involved was arrested for an outstanding warrant.
Back in August, a Vancouver resident had a similar experience when she found her stolen bike for sale online. She managed to trick the thieves into giving it back to her.
At that time Const. Brian Montague with the VPD said they would like anyone who sees their stolen property online to call the police. “We can work with the victim to facilitate getting their property back. Not only can we help get the property back, but ensure the safety of the victim, immediately identify the person in possession of the bike, and request a criminal charge if there is evidence to support those charges,” he said via email. “It is much easier to prove a theft or that someone is in possession of stolen property when police find them in possession of that property rather than trying to identify and prove the crime after the fact based on a few pieces of information.”
“That arrest may solve and prevent many more crimes than the one stolen bike.”
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