This hilarious bit has come across the crime blotter this morning: A thief tried to pilfer a small drone and a remote-control helicopter from a Radio Shack on Polk Street Thursday morning, only to be taken down in the street by a couple of tech bro vigilantes!
As CBS 5 reports, the incident happened around 10 a.m. yesterday when the thief came into the store at Polk and Jackson to steal those two items, and went running out.
Greg Forrest, CEO and president of GreenHawk Financial Services a business that helps people reclaim lost and unclaimed assets, via software was shopping in the store and chased the thief out, tackling and punching him. Forrest's glasses were crushed in the melee, and the thief managed to free himself and run further.
A block away, though, he was spotted by Jeff Manheimer, COO and co-founder of Tripping.com, which is a search engine for vacation rentals, who apparently witnessed some of what had happened and wanted to participate in the suspect's detention himself. He says he, "just barreled into him in the middle of the intersection and took him out," even though the thief was at that point trying to escape by bicycle. Manheimer managed to hold him down until police got there.
Cue multiple news outlets interviewing these vigilante heroes.
My heroic cofounder @Jmanheimer tackled a thief on Polk Street today! http://t.co/KbM4dDTTyh pic.twitter.com/lfcH9Jw6G5
— Jen O'Neal (@jenoneal) January 16, 2015
As Forrest put it, "It’s been a crazy day because CEOs and COOs are not supposed to be running down the street tackling people."
I believe this would be an appropriate moment to trot out an overused phrase: Only in San Francisco, people.