A BUNGLING thief tries to flee a shop with stolen phones — but can’t open the door.
Owner Afzal Adam, 52, used a £250 gizmo installed behind the counter to lock the entrance after becoming suspicious of his motives.
He let the man go after he put the phones down, fearing he could get violent at Phone Market in Dewsbury, West Yorks.
Afzal said: “With people wearing masks and balaclavas, I was worried about not being able to identify anyone if they did steal from my store.
“He’d have gotten away with £1,600 of merchandise, so the mechanism has paid for itself!
“After I had the owner of another local store come in and ask what mechanism we had as they wanted the same.”
He added: “99.99% of the comments have been saying well done and commending our forgiveness.
“Some people have been asking ‘Why didn’t you beat him up?’, but we would never do that.
“I hope I have showed people what humanity is – there’s more to the story than this and if we had acted out it would just have been another story of violence.”
