GOOD SAMARITAN : Quick-thinking bus passenger helps police arrest phone thief

By The Nation

 

The photo on the left is taken from JibJib Pongpakkittikul's Facebook and shows Boy, the suspect, sitting with the phone on his hand. The right photo shows police escorting Boy after he was arrested.

 

A passenger on a public bus noticed that the man sitting in front of him kept refusing to receive scores of calls to the expensive mobile phone he was holding in his hands.
 

The quick-thinking passenger leaned over, peeked at the incoming calls and found that they were all from the same number.

 

He telephoned the number on his own phone and talked with the caller, who claimed that he was the owner of that mobile phone and that it had been stolen from him along with his motorcycle.

 

The Good Samaritan then revealed what he had found to the conductor – she approached the man, who confessed to stealing the phone and when the bus stopped outside at a police station near Soi Sukhumvit 62, the driver and the conductor took him out and handed him over to police.

 

The incident happened on bus no 180 while it was travelling on an expressway, so it was not possible for the thief, later named by police as Boy Deemalert, to escape by jumping out of the bus.

 

The whole story became known after another passenger, JibJib Pongpakkittikul, mentioned the incident on her Facebook page. She said she had also become suspicious after seeing the man repeatedly reject the calls and appear not to know security code to unlock the phone.

 

Initially, scores of FB users questioned JibJib, claiming she must have made it up and saying it sounded more like the plot from a film than a real story.

However her story was confirmed when the bus conductor was interviewed by a news TV programme.

 

The conductor, Naruedee U-sadee, said Boy got into the bus at a bus station near Sai Nam Pueng School and while the bus was on the expressway, a man approached her, saying that the man stole the phone.

 

She approached the man after noticing that he was not armed and asked whether he had indeed stolen it.

 

“I tried to convince him to confess by not using an aggressive approach out of fear that he would harm me and other passengers,” she said. “Luckily, he confessed. The bus driver then stopped the bus at the police station and he was handed over to police.”

 

Initial reports suggested Boy had also stolen a motorcycle from the same victim but that he was stopped at a road checkpoint for not wearing a helmet and police had seized the bike, forcing him to take the bus instead.

 

He was later sent to the police station in Phra Pradang, where the theft of the motorcycle and the mobile phone had allegedly taken place.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30368642

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2019-05-01

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“Luckily, he confessed"

????

 

This is bizarre...

 

I have never heard of someone ‘investigating’ a stranger who does not answer their phone on a bus! 

2 minutes ago, notasmartassknowitallfarag said:

This is bizarre...

I have never heard of someone ‘investigating’ a stranger who does not answer their phone on a bus! 

Initially yes, but this seems to explain why:

 

3 hours ago, webfact said:

JibJib Pongpakkittikul, mentioned the incident on her Facebook page. She said she had also become suspicious after seeing the man repeatedly reject the calls and appear not to know security code to unlock the phone. 

So a good public-spirited act by JibJib Pongpakkittikul.

And the incident on the bus happened only because he got stopped by the police at a checkpoint for not wearing a helmet. Presumably, they impounded the bike, not because they knew it was stolen, but because he didn’t have enough money on him to pay the fine.

3 minutes ago, silver sea said:

And the incident on the bus happened only because he got stopped by the police at a checkpoint for not wearing a helmet. Presumably, they impounded the bike, not because they knew it was stolen, but because he didn’t have enough money on him to pay the fine.

I'd agree with that.

I can't say categorically it doesn't happen, but I've never yet seen a Thai policeman checking a vehicle registration using his radio.

The best they can do is checking physical documents - licence, Thai ID/passport, road tax sticker paid up to date, insurance/ownership.

"A passenger on a public bus noticed that the man sitting in front of him kept refusing to receive scores of calls to the expensive mobile phone he was holding in his hands."

 

Had he been in a public house he'd have got away with that. Pub 1

6 hours ago, webfact said:

“I tried to convince him to confess by not using an aggressive approach out of fear that he would harm me and other passengers,” she said. “Luckily, he confessed.

Oh Boy, so stupid.

6 hours ago, Happystance said:

“Luckily, he confessed"

????

 

And probably got his sentence reduced by half for it