A HILTON man whose two custom mountain bicycles were stolen in May was “pleasantly surprised” when he identified the bikes as two of the 37 nabbed by Mountain Rise police last month.
Hilton resident Duncan Housten said two of his bicycles to the value of R30 000 were stolen from his home in May and he thought he would “never see them again”. “I myself bought a new bicycle because I thought they were gone for good,” said Housten.
Housten said he phoned the station to see if his two bikes were among those intercepted by police shortly after the article on the bike nab appeared in The Witness.
“I am very happy to have both my bicycles back, it’s an added bonus to the new bike I bought.”
He added that the process of proving ownership had been a little more complicated than it should have been, as police had told him that someone else had tried to claim his bike.
“I had to get an invoice from Hattons Cycles, where I bought my bike, and had them write up an affidavit to prove ownership.”
He added that everything now seemed to be in order and once all the paperwork had been completed, he would be able to take his recovered bicycles home.
Mountain Rise SAPS spokesperson Captain Gay Ebrahim said they were pleased that people were coming forward and identifying their bikes and encouraged others to come forward with their proof of payment to claim their bicycles. “We have had three people come forward to claim their bicycles and we encourage more people to come forward.
“If the bicycles are not claimed, they will be forfeited to the state and then auctioned off,” she said.
Hattons Cycles owner Navin Kain said he was “extremely happy” his client had found both his bicycles and were pleased they had been able to help by proving Housten’s purchase of the bike. “Hattons Cycles will be proceeding with data-dotting in three of our stores within the next few weeks,” he said.
He said data-dotting would be the backbone of identifying any stolen bikes around KZN.
Data-dotting is a process ofinvolves marking an object with thousands of tiny coded dots, invisible to the naked eye.
The dots are made up by microscopic letters or numbers which can be read under UV light and the code can then be entered into the datadot system that has all the information linked to the code, such as the name of a bike’s owner.
Should you suspect your bike be among those stored at Mountain Rise, contact Vanashree Pillay to make an appointment on 033 387 9672
