bike thief

To All With Bicycles: Beware!

I woke up last night to the whine of grinding metal. I stuck my head out the window and saw a man using an electric hand-saw gizmo to slice a lock off of a bike hitched to a gate railing two buildings down. Still groggy, I called 911 to report it, but by the time I had told the operator what I thought was happening, he had popped the lock and thrown the bike in the back of a van. As the van sped away, I tried to read the license plate but it was obscured by a tree. It was a lousy thing to witness.

The details: 4:45am, looked like 426 Sterling Place, he looked like a trim, African-American man in his forties with no facial hair in possibly a green t-shirt and pants driving a steel-blue or silver-blue van, maybe a chevy, probably mid-90's make.

If anyone wakes to that whining sound and sees a van, I guess call 911. And if you have a bike, better to keep it locked up inside the building, not on the street.