A tracker on a bicycle was not enough to help PR boss Paul Hayes to find his VanMoof, which was stolen from his back garden at 4am on Sunday night. But while the electric tracker on the bike alone wasn’t accurate enough, the bike was found thanks to a local Garda searching the nearby lanes.
The VanMoof bike was in a locked mode with an alarm enabled, but Hayes thinks that the time of the theft, at 4am, and the stormy weather helped the thief carry it away with the alarm blaring.
Yesterday afternoon, Paul Hayes, founder of Beachhut PR, tweeted: “My bike was stolen from my back garden at 4am and is tracked to a neighbouring street. Only narrows it down to about 25 residences so just called around to a few to let them know that the bike has to be cut in half to stop the tracker. And now we wait for someone to move it.”
In a welcome update this morning, he added: “Good news people. The amazing Garda Mark in Rathmines found my bike up a lane on the outer edge of the circle.”
He joked: “My walking and searching, bribing local kids, you people, no help whatsoever it turns out… a good copper and a dodgy tracker and an annoying bust e-bike company did it.”
Hayes said he has since added the tracking to the Find My app so that it will be more accurate in future.
A Garda spokesperson this afternoon tweeted: “Paul’s e-bike was stolen from his back garden during over the weekend Paul had a tracker on it but it wasn’t quite precise. Unable to locate it himself — he gave his local station a bell. Garda Mark Donnellan was on-duty and went straight out on the beat.”
They added: “Garda Donnellan managed to locate the bike and had it returned to Paul in time for the Monday morning commute! Trackers help but always report a theft to us and will we do our very best to see your property rightfully returned to you and a suspect identified.”