Less than 48 hours after Capital Bike’s one of a kind cargo e-bike was stolen, it was found and returned to its Hillside Avenue home.
On Tuesday June 20th, the active transport non-profit shared security camera footage of the bike being stolen and the thief breaking through two high-end bike locks to get it.
The video was shared widely throughout the community which resulted in the bike being located and returned to its rightful owner.
“I really think that the reason why the bike was recovered is because there was such a powerful community response,” said Adam Krupper, Executive Director of Capital Bike.
“This isn’t something that flew under the radar.”
Krupper got the call at around 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, June 21st that the bike had been located in a treed area of Topaz Park, but it was left in a state of disarray.
Two Capital Bike staff members rushed to Topaz Park when they got the call and identified the bike as the one that was stolen from them, but unfortunately, the bike was disassembled and stripped of many components rendering it unrideable.
“It had been just torn to pieces,” Krupper told Victoria Buzz. “Everything had been stripped from it.”
“The staff wandered around the general vicinity of where the frame and box were found. They were digging through the bushes and finding parts in the bushes.”
After 20 to 25 minutes the two staff members had found several pieces and while they were searching, Capital Bike’s good samaritan neighbours Cit-E Cycles came by the park to help them get the parts they could find back to the non-profit’s headquarters.
Krupper has now reached out to Phil Marciniak, who runs Sustainawave to see how much it would cost to return the bike dubbed ‘the whale’ back to its former glory. Marciniak estimated it would cost about $2,500, given the extensive damages.
Now, Krupper and the team at Capital Bike are setting up a fundraiser for folks who wish to donate to help the non-profit organization to repair their dearly beloved cargo bike.
The fundraiser can be found online, here. As of this publication, the non-profit has raised over $1,300 to repair the cargo bike.
