A 49-year-old man in Tokyo has been arrested for snatching glasses straight off of people’s faces while he rides around on what appears to be an electric bike. He sounds like some 21st-century folkloric trickster demon, but alas, he is not, for he is a real-life 49-year-old man with a thing for glasses.
Authorities say that, on September 2, the suspect approached a pedestrian in his 20s under the guise of needing directions to the nearest train station. As the man was about to offer directions, the glasses thief struck, snatching the glasses off of the poor stranger’s face. The glasses were valued at around ¥3000, which is only about $20 US. Still, as a glasses wearer myself, being out in the world without my glasses is a frightening experience. It feels like any step I take is liable to be the one that plunges me down into an open manhole.
The police eventually caught the glasses thief. No retelling of the story available online details why the cops decided to search the suspect’s home, but they did. That’s when they discovered that snatching glasses off of some man’s face under the guise of asking for directions was not a one-off instance of freak behavior.
In the glasses thief’s house, they found 50 pairs of glasses that the cops suspect were also stolen. Whether or not they were stolen directly off of the faces of the people wearing them as the thief scurried away, tee-hee’ing his way into the distance with an impish mischievousness is unclear. But the cops did take him in on suspicion of a different snatch-and-grab case involving a man on an electric bike.
The post Moped-Riding Thief Busted With 50 Pairs of Strangers’ Glasses appeared first on VICE.
The post Moped-Riding Thief Busted With 50 Pairs of Strangers’ Glasses appeared first on VICE.
