A New York City woman who had her phone brazenly snatched from her hands by a cyclist ran after the thief. A Citibiker who witnessed the heist joined in, and it was all videotaped from a nearby car.
New Yorkers are constantly complaining about unaware millennial pedestrians — that they're so absorbed in their smartphones, they pay no attention to what's going on around them. If this video is any indication of the downside to that, the latest generation of multitasking city dwellers may want to think twice about getting lost in their beloved devices.
Watch as this young New York City woman casually strolls through Alphabet City during the busy evening rush hour. Suddenly, a cyclist whizzes by her, grabs her Galaxy Note 4, and zooms away. What happens next is even more remarkable, as the woman suddenly morphs into a champion sprinter, and, aided by a good Samaritan on a Citibike, frantically gives chase to the lowlife who snatched her cherished device from her hands.
The whole thing (well, the theft and subsequent brief chase anyway) was captured by a nearby driver and his passenger, who presumably had nothing better to do than shoot video of the mundane New York streetscape via dashcam while driving.
What's most amazing is how far the woman giving chase runs in such a short period of time, outrunning the car filming the incident in Manhattan rush hour traffic — but not the speedy cyclist, who disappears from the screen entirely after his brief cameo, never to return.
It appears that the thief also got away with one of the best smartphones on the market, the top-end Samsung Galaxy Note 4 phablet, which leads us to wonder if he staked out the victim beforehand, based upon the quality of her device — or if he took a chance, knowing he could just as easily wind up with a cheap LG prepaid handset.
In any case, Samsung winds up getting no respect here, as the video's posters erroneously refer to the stolen device as – you guessed it – an iPhone.
