Bike thieves beware!

Published Sep 24 2007, 07:07 PM by Caitlin E. Curran

Last Wednesday night began average enough for Lee Peters. He stopped in at Economy Hardware on Mass Ave in Boston, near Christian Science Plaza, around 6 p.m. When he walked outside, he explains via an e-mail from the Boston Critical Mass chain, he saw “two people standing around my bike in the middle of stealing it. I ran forward, the guy saw me laughed as if we were friends. Then he took a swing at me with the bolt cutters. I ducked. He ran. I got on my bike to follow. I couldn't find him.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Turns out there are some Good Samaritans in Boston - Christian Science Monitor staffer Andrew Heining, a stranger to Peters, who’d had two bikes stolen in the same area, witnessed the incident, and took action. He explains, via a lengthy entry from his Facebook page (we shortened it to the abridged version):

“One of them ran across Mass. Ave., directly toward me. Never one to shy from the action, I took chase. In fact, I began yelling: 'Call the police! This guy's stealing bikes!'

I was right on his heels for most of the chase (I was on my bike and he on foot), and I never stopped yelling for people to call the police, much to their collective puzzlement... It was at this point that he got a little tired of me following him, and he stopped running... I again yelled for someone to call the police (and this time, someone did - a bystander from Mass Ave, who'd followed us, cell phone in hand, and was standing behind me now)... he came at me, swinging the bag of tools he'd been carrying - a pair of bolt cutters, a socket set, a screwdriver, and I think a saw - hitting me in the back. We wrestled, Greco roman style... he escaped, pushing both me and the other guy who'd stopped to help out of the way, and running, this time up Dalton St., over the Mass Pike. ...a police car came screaming down Scotia street after like 45 seconds, and, upon being told that I had been chasing the thief, the officer told me to get in and help him look for him.”

A different police car eventually tracked down the thief, and the police asked Heining to ID him. Now, he says, the thief is being charged with: "larceny, being in possession of burglary tools (he dropped the bag of them in the scuffle with me at Scotia street), and, get this – assault with a deadly weapon. Yep, that bag of tools constituted a deadly weapon."

One bike thief down, thanks to two unfuckwithable bystanders. And a bunch o’ police. Nice job, guys.