City authorities and residents often complain about electric scooters abandoned on the sidewalks by those who rent them by the minute. One Florida man took his indignation one step further, actively sabotaging about 140 of them at night, on a spree that started last April.
Last Sunday, the vandal was arrested. The BBC identifies him as 59-year-old Randall Williams, believed to have damaged more than 140 electric scooters by cutting their brakes and covering their QR activation codes with stickers.
Fort Lauderdale Police tell the media outlet that most of the 140 incidents occurred within a 2-mile radius of where Williams resides, which is why they’re looking at him as the suspect for all. On the night he did get caught, he got caught red-handed: prowling around a dark alley, armed with 2 wire cutters and one glove.
Since he couldn’t provide a satisfying explanation for his presence there, the police arrested him for loitering and prowling, felony criminal mischief and resisting arrest. Police were already on the lookout for the vandal, having been alerted by Lime and Bird about the damaged e-scooters. They had set up surveillance cameras and spoke to residents to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
The video below shows Williams in action: he stops by a pair of electric scooters and proceeds to snip their brakes. Aside from causing damage to the scooters, for which the companies renting them will have had to pay, such a gesture could have had fatal consequences in case a rider picked either of the damaged scooters the next morning.
At one point, Williams thinks he’s been spotted so he acts as if he’s leaving, only to turn back and continue working on the scooters.
As noted above, since rental e-scooters have popped up, there have been various complaints against this type of service, with the most frequent being that they add to the issue of crowding in large cities, which they’re supposed to help solve. Be that as it may, cutting their brakes or otherwise tampering with them is not the solution: it’s only making matters worse.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News