A Tottenham fashion designer has revealed how she chased down her phone thief for 2km on foot and recovered her device along with six others.
Izzy Du said her phone was snatched by two men on a bike while she was walking along a main road earlier this week. Despite the theft, she decided to run after them. About 2km later, she saw the men pass her phone to a third individual.
Ms Du managed to catch up with one of the suspects and helped police track them down.
Using her laptop, she later tracked her phone’s location to a hedge. Upon investigating, she discovered six other stolen devices, believed to have been taken earlier that same morning.
Police are continuing their investigation into the thefts.
She told BBC London: “My heart dropped and I was like no, no, no, no. It’s just horrible, it’s the worst feeling when this actually happens to you.
“Your whole life is on your phone – it couldn’t have been worse timing because of everything going on with my work that day.
“I’m running and running and shouting after them that I need my phone.”
Ms Du said that she had been changing the volume of the music she was listening to when her phone was snatched. She said that the police had “given her every excuse” to not go and search for her device but she did anyway.
At least three of the devices have been returned to their rightful owners - some of them saw Ms Du running after the thieves.
A 16-year-old boy was later arrested and charged. The other three devices are still in police care.
A phone is now stolen in the capital every six minutes (around 64,000 devices annually), with the government sounding the alarm over a 150 per cent increase in this criminal activity.
In London, 72,936 mobile phones were stolen from January 2024 to November 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police and only 750 were recovered.
A spokesman from the Met offered: “We understand the impact that mobile phone theft can have on victims – it’s an invasive and sometimes violent crime – and we’re committed to protecting Londoners and tackling this issue as we make the capital safer.
"Met officers are targeting resources to hotspot areas with increased patrols, including utilising plain clothes officers.”
