Upon receiving a report of the incident, a team of police officers went through CCTV footage from cameras near the crime scene, and spotted a middle-aged man carrying the bike. (image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 26 (Korea Bizwire) – A thief who stole a pricy imported bicycle and carried the locked two-wheeler for 18km to avoid CCTV detection was eventually caught red-handed by police officers who tracked him using 68 different CCTV feeds over a period of eight days.
According to the Gangseo Police Station in Seoul on March 26, the owner found out that his brown bicycle was missing on February 28. He locked the rear wheel of his bike, which was worth 500,000 won, but it could not prevent the theft.
Upon receiving a report of the incident, a team of police officers went through CCTV footage from cameras near the crime scene, and spotted a middle-aged man carrying the bike. The police tracked the man using CCTV, and it seemed like only a matter of time before they would catch him.
However, police had difficulty determining the thief’s final destination, as he crisscrossed alleys of residential areas in the southwestern part of Seoul, apparently to avoid being followed on CCTV.
As officers watched him disappear into an alley in Shinjeong-dong, Yangcheon-gu, hope for his capture was fading.
However, the police were not finished. Officers checked a total of 68 CCTV cameras over a period of eight days to finally find the thief entering a villa in Shinjeong-dong. The police arrested the man in his fifties on March 10.
Although the straight-line distance between the crime scene and the thief’s house was only 10km, the thief carried the bicycle for 18 km, crisscrossing his way through the alleys. He disassembled the bicycle, and painted it black.
The thief said to police, “I don’t remember stealing the bicycle as I was drunk. When I became sober, I found out that I was carrying the bike and as I could not return it to its original place, I just carried it into our house.”
The police forwarded the case to the public prosecutors’ office, and the suspect is expected to be charged with theft.
By Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
