He did a good turn.
A young gymnast is back in the saddle after a thief stole her bike in Ditmas Park thanks to the generosity of a kind-hearted Park Slope resident, who donated his spare bike after reading about the youngster’s plight in The Brooklyn Paper.
“The story has a happy ending, though I hope the punk who stole her bike has to pay, at least karmically,” said Park Slope resident and transit advocate Eric McClure, who offered his bike to 13-year-old Maggie Weddle.
Security footage showed the thief wrench Weddle’s ride off a bike rack on Church Avenue between E. 10th Street and Stratford Road on July 16, which happened to be Weddle’s first day working as an intern at nearby Prospect Gymnastics.
The studio’s owner, Mina Marsow, filed a police report on behalf of the youngster later that day, but a spokesman for the police department confirmed on July 23 that police had closed the case without making any arrests.
Marsow said she is fed up with crime along Church Avenue, and discussed how she locks the studio’s front door at all times, telling parents and students to instead use a rear entrance, after some creep let himself in to give her flowers while she was teaching.
“It is not a very safe block, just in general,” she said.
But the gymnastics teacher choose to give cops the benefit of the doubt in their decision to drop Weddle’s case, and suggested detectives probably have more pressing matters to attend to.
“They have limited resources, so probably a murder case has more of a priority,” said Marsow.
A spokesman for the department declined to say why the case was dropped.
In addition to the new bike, McClure also donated a U-lock to secure it with, and Weddle, who’s not taking any chances, has taken the prudent step of storing her bike at the rear of the gym, according to Marsow.
“He gave us actually gave us the lock too,” she said. “It was really sweet.”
