A TEENAGER has been reunited with her £3,000 electric bike after it was stolen from her by a city centre gang - but she says it is "completely ruined".
Saskia Stickings, 18, had cycled to Queen Street on Sunday evening when a gang of six men approached her and remarked “that’s a nice bike, isn’t it?” whilst she was locking it up.
The thugs then yanked it of her, leaving her without a bike to get home.
Miss Stickings’s mum, Mari Keskula, then published a post on Facebook about the incident and Essex Police issued an appeal.
On Wednesday, however, a member of the public said they saw a man riding exactly the same bike – a Claude Butler Glide – before confronting them and ordering them to return it.
The man then messaged Ms Keskula to tell her the bike had been found, and offered to keep it safe until Miss Stickings could pick it up from an address in Greenstead.
When Miss Stickings arrived to pick up the bike, however, she found it had been badly damaged, and it took her two hours to walk it back to her home in Greenstead because it could not be ridden safely.
Ms Keskula said: “It’s completely ruined – they have done so much damage to it, it’s unusable. It is beyond repair.
“They messed up all the gears and destroyed all the electronic bits of the bike – they have taken everything off the bike they could have.
“Saskia said it was ruined and she had to push it home for two hours.”
Ms Keskula said her daughter had been left shaken by the whole incident, and had feared the gang may have had knives on them when they approached her.
“My daughter was saying they might have been homeless people and worried they might be carrying knives – in cases like that, I think, just take it.
“Life is more important – a bike can be repaired.
She continued: “But, I am happy that community spirit is alive and well – people are aware of these problems, but it’s not good people can go up to a young girl and intimidate her.
“It’s just not right.”
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