Cunning cabbie puts kybosh on botched bike theft

Two would-be bicycle thieves in Örebro in central Sweden inadvertently unmasked themselves on Tuesday night when they called a taxi to help them get their booty home.

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Shortly after the two sticky-fingered 20-year-olds had dislodged the bicycle, they placed a call to a taxi service in order to avoid having to walk all the way home with the bike, which remained unrideable as a wheel was still locked.

As luck would have it, the young couple’s call was answered by taxi driver Hassan Abdulnabi, who was more than happy to accommodate the couple’s unusual request, the Expressen newspaper reports.

After meeting up with the woman, Hassan then set about constructing a rack on which to place the bicycle.

But when the woman's male friend showed up a few minutes later with the bicycle, the observant cab driver was surprised to see that the bicycle in question actually belonged to him.

Careful not to alarm the hapless crooks, Abdulnabi began subtly questioning the man about the bicycle.

“I asked him if he had the key for it to test if it was really his. He said he had it, but thought it was best if it stayed locked,” Abdulnabi told Aftonbladet.

Not willing to let the couple get away with stealing his bike, Abdulnabi asked the couple to get in the car and then called the police.

But when no patrol car showed up, Abdulnabi took matters into his own hands.

“It was taking too long so I drove to the police station, but without saying anything to the passengers,” said Abdulnabi.

Upon arriving on what was apparently a busy night for Örebro law enforcement, however, the cabbie couldn’t track down any officers, deciding instead to lock the thieves in his car.

“I made my own little jail for them for about three or four minutes,” Abdulnabi told Aftonbladet.

When police finally arrived, the young man continued to insist the bicycle belonged to him and that he’d been using it all summer long.

However, Abdulnabi finally silenced the man by producing the key to the bicycle’s lock, proving that the cab driver was indeed the rightful owner of the disputed two-wheeler.

A relieved Abdulnabi said he plans on pressing charges against the couple for trying to steal his bike, and is thankful he happened to be dispatched to answer the call.

“If another cab driver had taken the job, the thieves would have certainly gotten away,” he told the newspaper.