WATCH: Suspect cuts brakes on bikeshare ride in Seattle
Aug 17, 2018, 1:47 PM | Updated: 2:54 pm
Seattle police are hunting for a suspect who was caught on video potentially damaging the brakes on a bikeshare ride in SoDo.
RELATED: Another bikeshare company leaves Seattle
SPD reports that an unknown man walked by several bikes along 4th Avenue and South Main Street around 11:45 p.m. on June 14, 2018. These bikes all had their brake lines cut. The man appears to be messing with the brake lines on the handlebars.
“He can be seen manipulating what appears to be a cutting tool around the bikes’ brakes before he walks out of frame,” SPD states.
Police suspect the same man of damaging bikeshare brakes about a month earlier near 4th Avenue and Holgate Street at around 11:15 p.m. Surveillance photos show someone with similar features as the man in the June video.
A suspect damages brakes on a bikeshare ride in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood in May 2018. (Seattle Police Department)
Both images, taken a month apart, show a man wearing a similar backpack, shorts, and sneakers.
SPD asks that anybody who may know the suspect, or has other information, call the South Precinct at 206-386-1855.
There have been several reports of damaged brakes on bikeshare rides around Seattle ever since the free-floating bikes came to town last year.
The incidents are not the only times bikeshare rides have been vandalized in Seattle. Bikes have been spray painted, and even completely disassembled. Other forms of vandalism have also struck Seattle in the past. Tacks were spread across a new bike lane along Westlake Avenue in 2016. Not to mention the bikes that have been left in inappropriate places.
Bikeshare company Lime reports that less than 1 percent of its bikes have been vandalized in town.
