Two elderly sisters from Essex, Rose Gardener, 73 and Helen Challis, 72, have become the target of mindless thieves this week, after opportunist ‘scumbags’ made off with their mobility scoters from outside a popular bingo venue. The two widowed sisters have pleaded with the people responsible to bring them back.
Over the last nine years, the pair have either played bingo or taken charge of the venue when there were staffing issues and as always, they park their mobility scooters outside the venue, each of which costing about £1800.
On Tuesday night, halfway through the bingo session, Helen noticed the pair of scooters had vanished and headed straight to the CCTV area to see where they’d gone, and it was revealed that the scooters were stolen just 5-minutes before the interval.
Both scooters are dark red with black tyres; one seat is grey the other is black. Sunglasses, reading glasses, clothing and dog walking equipment were in the baskets of the scooters at the time of the theft.
Housebound Now:
Both sisters rely on the scooters for getting around the seaside town of Frinton in Essex (UK), this is because Mrs Gardener suffers with arthritis and her sister Mrs Challis has two fractures in her back which are being held in place with a metal plate in her foot.
Mr Gardener is hoping the thieves will have a heart and return the scooters to them by revealing how much the pair need their scooters: “We always park outside, and we have never had a problem before but when we came out there was no sign of them, and we felt sick. The people who did this are scumbags and they clearly don’t realise how much disabled people need them.”
She continued: “My sister is now housebound - why would you want to take someone’s mobility away? We use them every single day, so we had no way of getting home, but luckily the kind people at the bingo gave us a lift. Please bring them back, put them back where you found them and own up. It is not just the scooters they have stolen. We now have to replace everything, but they don’t think about that at all. I don’t have much hope of seeing the scooters being returned.”
If you have any information on the whereabouts of the scooters or news on who took them, please call the police on 101; the non-emergency number for multiple police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Calls to this number are charged at a rate of 15p per call, regardless of how long you’re on the phone for.
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Comments (1)
JaniceJ 10/17/19, 10:10:36 AM
Stealing is bad regardless of what it is, but you need to be some sort of heartless monster to steal a disabled persons mobility scooter! I hope they get them back!
