Thief caught in bike chase

A workshop assistant gave chase on a vintage cycle when a thief made off on an eight-speed mountain bike from a Stafford recycling charity.

The culprit decided to exchange his worn out bike for the mountain bike, which had been left unattended outside the Back2Bikes unit at Greyfriars.

He was spotted and pursued by Sean McGuigan, one of the charity's staff who grabbed the first bike that came to hand - a three-speed vintage Post Office delivery bike.

After chasing for about a mile on the delivery bike - which is at least 25 years old - he caught up with the thief, who ran off after claiming just to have borrowed the mountain bike.

"I was determined the thief was not going to get away so I just grabbed the first bike I saw, which, unfortunately for me, was our old delivery bike. By coincidence I'd only repaired a puncture on the bike a few hours earlier so I knew it was roadworthy, but had never ridden it any distance," said 20-year-old Sean.

"Luckily, the thief thought he had got away without being seen so he rode along the Isobel Trail towards the town centre. However, with only three gears on the delivery bike, I had to pedal hard to catch him. When I did finally catch him, on the Doxey Road, he said be had just borrowed the bike and gave the bike back without a problem and made off on foot towards Doxey."

Back2Bikes operations manager Mark Vyner said: "I was amazed just how quickly Sean took up the chase and was even more amazed when he came back with the stolen bike. In fact he returned so quickly I was still on the telephone reporting the incident to the police.

"What is even more bizarre is that we still have the thief's old bike which he abandoned when he stole the mountain bike from outside our unit.

"As a charity we rely on the public to donate bikes to us, and this is the first time anyone has tried to steal one from us. Without Sean's quick thinking and superhuman effort in pedalling the old bike as fast as he did, I'm not sure we would ever have got the bike back.

"But of course every cloud has a silver lining as we still have the thief's old bike. He is more than welcome to come and collect it from us although, as the police are waiting to speak to him, I think this is very unlikely.

"On the other hand if he decides he would rather leave it with us as a donation, we will of course recycle it and use the money we make to help with the work of the charity."