Blind BBC reporter chases and sits on mugger who stole his phone

Dec 27, 2022

A blind BBC reporter chased and caught a mugger who stole his mobile phone, jumping on the “gentleman” and calling 999.

Tweeting a picture of an injured leg, Sean Dilley said the handset was “snatched” from him by a man on a bike.

He “gave immediate chase”, adding: “I took a running jump and dived on the thief and knocked him off his bike and onto the floor.”

Once he had caught the suspect, he placed his “body weight across his legs and his wrists”.

Explaining that he “knows the legals”, he “used reasonable force to detain (the suspect) under S3 criminal law act, 1967”.

He recovered his phone, “advised” the thief he had been detained and called the police, letting go of the suspect after a few minutes, but only when others had arrived to help.

He hopes the “gentleman” will “reconsider his career choices”, noting that he targeted the “wrong blind person” on the “wrong day”.

Dilley suspects he was targeted because he is blind, has been left with “quite a few cuts and bruises”, and is “quite sore”.

While admitting that what he did was risky, he said he’d worked very hard to pay for his iPhone 14 pro and thinks the “gentleman had the shock of his life”.

He added, however: “The best advice is that no property is worth risking your life for. That’s what I did today and I’m stupid. Just instinctive I think.”

It reportedly happened while he was getting a coffee during a night shift at the BBC in central London.

Three police officers are said to have walked him back to the newsroom.

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