Tag: bikes

By Caleb Hutton

BELLINGHAM — A plainclothes Bellingham police detective — and some citizen detective work — helped to recover a stolen high-end mountain bike this week after it wound up on Craigslist.

The $6,500 bike was stolen in November from a bike mounted on the back of a parked car in the 1000 block of East Sunset Drive, said Bellingham police spokesman Mark Young. The bike was not locked down.

Earlier this week — a couple months after the theft — the owner got tipped off that the unique, blue bike was listed on Craigslist, listed at about half the actual value, Young said. A Bellingham detective emailed the seller and set up a time and place to make a purchase.

Luke Mirsepasy Johnson, 21, brought the bike to the 1500 James Street at 11:30 a.m. Jan. 8, Young said. The serial number had been filed off, but everything else was just as the owner had described.

Johnson was arrested without incident, and the cyclist got his mountain bike back.

Young said there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this story:

• First, if your bike is mounted on your car, buy a lock for it.
• Second, if you buy a bike off Craiglist, and the serial numbers have been filed off, call the cops and make sure it’s not stolen.

“And you probably don’t want to deal with that kind of person anyway,” he said.

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