When most men would turn away and pretend not to see, a 22-year-old courier from London is refusing to let moped thieves get away with what they do. Even if that means putting himself at risk.
Omar, 22, posted a video of one of his most recent encounters with the moped thieves that are terrorizing London. He was riding in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, doing a final errand on his motorcycle, when he noticed strange activity near a parked bike.
Specifically, he saw sparks coming from the bike, which could only mean one thing: the guys standing next to it were trying to steal it. Omar pulled over and informed the thieves that he had them on camera, but that didn’t seem to scare them away. In fact, one of them, face hidden beneath a black balaclava, approached him, machete in hand.
Because this wasn’t his first brush with moped thieves, Omar had taken a tool from his bike, to protect himself in case push came to shove. That, it did.
“Without [the tool] that I may well have been stabbed for daring to foil the thieves theft attempt. In retrospect I probably wont confront thieves in a quiet area again,” he writes in the YouTube description of the video.
But that’s not to say he won’t stand up to thieves again, he tells The Sun. He refuses to be a victim and he refuses to be intimidated, so anytime he sees something out of the ordinary, he will intervene. The police are definitely not able to do their job in cases like this.
The only stipulation is that he will be more careful next time and not assume he’s not in danger just because he is filming everything.
“I'm still committed to putting pressure on them when and If I can. For those who say why I put myself in danger I will say this, before I even started engaging thieves I have been stabbed in the hand and kicked at over 40 mph while getting chased by them,” Omar explains. “My point is whether you engage them or not as long as you ride a motorcycle which I choose to do you will encounter them.”
Omar even chased down the thieves for some distance, before realizing they were faster and more experienced in driving on London’s narrow streets than he was, and ultimately giving up.
Specifically, he saw sparks coming from the bike, which could only mean one thing: the guys standing next to it were trying to steal it. Omar pulled over and informed the thieves that he had them on camera, but that didn’t seem to scare them away. In fact, one of them, face hidden beneath a black balaclava, approached him, machete in hand.
Because this wasn’t his first brush with moped thieves, Omar had taken a tool from his bike, to protect himself in case push came to shove. That, it did.
“Without [the tool] that I may well have been stabbed for daring to foil the thieves theft attempt. In retrospect I probably wont confront thieves in a quiet area again,” he writes in the YouTube description of the video.
But that’s not to say he won’t stand up to thieves again, he tells The Sun. He refuses to be a victim and he refuses to be intimidated, so anytime he sees something out of the ordinary, he will intervene. The police are definitely not able to do their job in cases like this.
The only stipulation is that he will be more careful next time and not assume he’s not in danger just because he is filming everything.
“I'm still committed to putting pressure on them when and If I can. For those who say why I put myself in danger I will say this, before I even started engaging thieves I have been stabbed in the hand and kicked at over 40 mph while getting chased by them,” Omar explains. “My point is whether you engage them or not as long as you ride a motorcycle which I choose to do you will encounter them.”
Omar even chased down the thieves for some distance, before realizing they were faster and more experienced in driving on London’s narrow streets than he was, and ultimately giving up.