A BUNGLING thief tries to flee a shop with stolen phones — but can’t open the door.
Owner Afzal Adam, 52, used a £250 gizmo installed behind the counter to lock the entrance after becoming suspicious of his motives.
SWNSShop owner Afzal Adam shows a customer some mobile phones[/caption]
SWNSThe man tries to do a runner with the phones[/caption]
SWNSBut the bungling thief couldn’t open the door as Afzal had locked it with his gizmo[/caption]
He let the man go after he put the phones down, fearing he could get violent at Phone Market in Dewsbury, West Yorks.
Afzal said: “With people wearing masks and balaclavas, I was worried about not being able to identify anyone if they did steal from my store.
“He’d have gotten away with £1,600 of merchandise, so the mechanism has paid for itself!
“After I had the owner of another local store come in and ask what mechanism we had as they wanted the same.”
He added: “99.99% of the comments have been saying well done and commending our forgiveness.
“Some people have been asking ‘Why didn’t you beat him up?’, but we would never do that.
“I hope I have showed people what humanity is – there’s more to the story than this and if we had acted out it would just have been another story of violence.”