Two local seniors have been grounded after two separate thefts of mobility scooters in New Westminster this month.
“My independence is gone,” West End resident Peet Parrest told the Record. “It’s like stealing somebody’s crutch or cane. It’s hard to imagine that someone would take your mobile chair, that they would be that heartless.”
His chair had been secured to a post in the carport of his Hamilton Street home with a “substantial chain,” Parrest said, but thieves used bolt cutters and made off with the mobility device last Tuesday, leaving only a single link of the chain.
On Sept. 1, a 76-year-old Brow of the Hill resident’s black $4,000 Shoprider Trailblazer scooter was stolen from a parking garage in the 900 block of Fifth Avenue, according Sgt. Jeff Scott.
“If you see an ad for these scooters online or throughout the City, please let us know,” Scott said. “The owners of these mobility scooters need them to get around and run errands. To think of someone stealing these for personal gain, which limits another person’s sense of freedom, is sad.”
Parrest’s Pride Go-Chair was black with pink accents on the base and worth about $3,400.
It might be dead by now, though, since the thief failed to take the electrical charger that goes with it.
Swapping stories with other disabled people, Parrest said he gets the impression people with disabilities are being targeted.
“It’s very easy for someone to follow me in that chair from midtown to my house and know that the chair is there and then take it,” he said.
Anyone with information about these thefts is asked to call the New Westminster Police Department at 604-525-5411.
