There are few worse feelings than walking out of a convenience store and realizing the thing you rode there on is no longer waiting for you. One e-bike owner in Orlando nearly learned that lesson the hard way, although police say this particular theft had a pretty quick ending.
According to the Orlando Police Department, officers were called to a convenience store in the 100 block of Pine Street on August 13 after someone took an unattended e-bike. Fortunately for the owner, public safety cameras were watching when the suspect hopped on and rode away.
Police say officers used the footage and their investigation to identify the person suspected of taking the bike. They located and arrested the suspect shortly afterward, but there was still the small matter of finding the stolen ride.
That part worked out pretty well, too, as officers recovered the e-bike and returned it to its owner. Hopefully, a bike lock is somewhere near the top of the shopping list now.
That Wasn’t The Best Place to Put It
Please give the following video a moment to load up.
The video is pretty hilarious, as it shows the person whose bike got stolen quite literally ride it into frame and put it in the worst possible place to avoid it getting stolen. After parking it to go inside, someone comes by and almost immediately makes him a victim.
With a guitar strapped to his back, the suspect walks over to the bike slowly before jumping on and riding away. He clearly had no idea that a security camera had been trained on him the entire time.
Shortly after the bike was reported missing, the officers of the Orlando Police Department banded together to find the suspect. His name was revealed to be John Frederick Welter.
Additional information about his arrest was not made available in this post.
Commenters Say Locking the Bike Might Be the Real Lesson Here
Several commenters familiar with the area weren’t particularly surprised to hear that an unattended e-bike disappeared. One person who said they had visited that particular 7-Eleven multiple times noted that they “always lock my bike up before going inside,” while another recalled having their own bicycle stolen as a child after leaving it outside a store.
Others poked fun at the department, describing what happened next as “investigative efforts,” considering public safety cameras had captured the theft. One sarcastically told officers to “take a break” after looking through the cameras, while another responded to the department’s wording with nothing but eye-roll emojis.
Not everyone was giving police a hard time, though, and one commenter praised OPD while saying the incident “shows the camera system is working.” Whatever you want to call the investigation, the owner got their e-bike back, and the suspect ended up under arrest, which is a considerably better ending than walking outside and wondering where your ride went.