The Specialized bike, zip-tied to a fence in Duane Park, and the pair who had been with the bike as they left the park, the woman on a scooter.
She confronts the pair in Duane Park
A Tribeca Good Samaritan stymied a pair of bike thieves last week after finding them with a bicycle inside Tribeca’s Duane Park, at Duane and Hudson Streets.
The Tribeca resident, a longtime park volunteer who asked not to be identified, said she had come into the park to meet a friend around noon when she saw a man and woman in their early 20s; the woman was behind a bench next to the fence.
“I thought that’s an odd place to be and as I was walking towards them I noticed that she had a bike inside the park. And I said, ‘Excuse me, you can’t store your bike there.’ Naive as I am thinking there’s no crime down here.”
The man, she said, first told her he lost the key to his lock and he was looking for it. But when she got closer she saw the bike was not locked to the fence. The woman, she could then see, had zip-tied the bike to the fence, and she had more ties in her hand.
“I said, ‘Wait a second, whose bike is this?’ And the guy said, ‘Who are you?’ And I said I’m with the park. Do you want me to call the Parks Department and have them come over?’
She said the woman replied, “I don’t really need the bike.”
“They realized the party was over and just took off.” But the pair left with a scooter, which also may not have been theirs. She speculated that a family may have gone into a nearby business and left the bike and scooter outside, unlocked. “I guess [the thieves] were going to zip-tie the bike there and then come back for it,” the resident said.
The resident walked the green Specialized bike to the 1st Precinct where on Thursday it remained unclaimed, police said.
The Good Samaritan, a longtime resident, bemoaned what she saw as unwelcome changes in the neighborhood. “We have to be mindful of the fact that we’re just another part of the city,” she said.
