THIS is the moment a woman slyly tries to pickpocket an unsuspecting mum with a pram in a children’s clothing store.
The shocking CCTV footage was caught in a store in north London and shows a thief pouncing for a victim’s purse.
The two-minute long clip circulating on social media shows children’s clothing store Clad, Stamford Hill, bustling on Sunday.
As mothers and children shop amongst the tightly packed racks of clothes, one woman in a black outfit is also browsing for a different kind of item.
Unlike the real shoppers, she is not wearing a skirt and has a black Covid face mask tucked under her chin.
The sly pickpocket walks around the story with clothing in her left hand and waits for one woman to turn her back to her.
The busy mother is pushing a baby in a pram and also has a second school age child with her in the store.
The thief pounces just as the mother and her daughter stop to look at a dress.
She walks behind the mother and slides her right hand through the clothes she is holding in her left.
The thief is then able to sneakily put her hand into the target’s purse while hiding her arm with the clothes.
But just as her hand reaches inside, the unaware target turns and walks to the front of the store, unwittingly avoiding the long arm of the woman.
The thief follows her and, as the target is trying to get her pram out the door, has a second crack at lifting from the purse.
But the target has to walk backwards to move her pram, pushing past the thief and spoiling her plans.
Another shopper spots what the thief is doing and alerts the mother to check her purse.
The thief then casually returns the dress she is holding to the rack and walks out of the store like nothing had happened.
The end of the CCTV footage shows the target then talking to other mums about what had happened.
It is unclear whether the thief managed to steal anything from the purse, but the women don’t looked shocked and chase after her as if she did.
Clad said it had no comment to make when approached by The Sun.
The Met said it was not investigating the incident.
By Emily-Jane Heap
A HARDWARE store owner who puts CCTV of thieves on YouTube and pins up faces from footage in his shop was accused of breach of privacy by a suspect.
Neil Mackay, 68, said police arrested the man — who was later convicted of theft — when he complained his snap was on show at Mackays of Cambridge.
He said he began compiling his online “rogues’ gallery” as he was fed up of the force failing to take action against “brazen thieves”.
Cops said they had “thoroughly” investigated two recent thefts but no suspects were arrested and the cases were filed.
Neil said the power tools theft problem has got worse in the last 12 months – with him continuing to upload his CCTV on YouTube.
He added: “We secure our power tools with cables and chains, but the thieves come armed with cable-cutters.
“They also cut off all the security tags so that when they go through our store security gates, they don’t set them off. They’re brazen in the way they do it.
“As a company we’ve had to redesign our shop and take the power tools off-display and put them behind a counter.
“But it’s pointless for us to keep selling them if they’re just going to be stolen in this manner.”
