Northwood News ♦ December 2006

Would You Say Irresponsible Teens or Just Plain Thieves?

By Jacquie Bokow

I’ve been alerted to two separate incidents — involving teenaged boys openly stealing — which both happened this fall after school began.

In the first incident, a male teenager was seen riding a very small, pink bicycle in the vicinity of Lombardy and Belton Roads one day after school.  When confronted (and I applaud the brave woman who did so), the teen admitted the bike wasn’t his.  “It was just lying there,” he said.  Asked where it was lying, he confessed, “in somebody’s yard.”  Admonished to return it, he turned back, but apparently only went one block, where he abandoned it against the stop sign at Belton Road and Cavalier Drive.  As the woman who spoke to the teen knew a child who lived nearby with a similar bike, she contacted the owner who confirmed her daughter’s bike was missing.  She was able to find and retrieve it.

The second incident was witnessed on Edgewood Avenue, up the hill from Southwood Avenue.  Two teenage boys apparently saw a lawn mower in someone’s yard and thought it was hilarious to release it at the top of the hill and watch it speed down Edgewood Avenue.  I have no further news of what happened to it or whether the mower was damaged, did any damage, or was ever reunited with its owner.  (The witness did not know from whose yard the mower was stolen.)

I don’t believe any of these teenage boys acted maliciously, just thoughtlessly (even stupidly).  Actually, I was encouraged by the fact that the bicycle thief admitted it wasn’t his bike (obvious as it was).  But isn’t it a shame they haven’t been taught any better?    ■