A driver has spoken of his grief after his rare £12,000 motorbike was stolen in broad daylight while he was talking on the phone just a few steps away. Triston Williams, 26, wheeled his bike from his home to the nearby St Wilfrids Square, Calverton, when he received a phone call from his friend.
Following the four-minute chat, he returned to find his bike, a Ducati Panigale 1199 S, had been taken. Triston said his original thought was he had parked it elsewhere, but a man who witnessed the incident told him a couple of people had "gone off with it."
Triston, who works as a product marketing manager for Road Angel, a manufacturer of GPS-based products and car dash cams, said he felt "a wave of depression" following the incident. He says he and Road Angel had been researching and developing state-of-the-art trackers for motorbikes to help bikers avoid situations like this one.
Now this has happened to Triston, he and the company are even more "passionate" about the work.
Triston said: "It was just an evening around six o'clock. I live in Calverton so I was at the village centre and I was going to do a bit of work on the bike.
"It was throwing up a code on the system so I was just going to do some work on it. But of course, it's a bit loud to keep starting up a relatively new Ducati next to the neighbours.
"People have got kids and dogs and things of that nature so I just wanted to be mindful so I just wheeled it up to the local car park in the village centre which is just a quick walk down the road from me.
"And then I got a call from a friend of mine and I had it parked up in the bay in front of the library in the village centre. I was on the phone for about four minutes with my friend and by the time I walked around and came back the bike had gone.
"When I walked back I was looking and I thought 'oh maybe I didn't park my bike where I thought I'd left it. And that's when an older gentleman said to me 'is that your bike that they've gone off with?'
"So yeah I was really just going to do a bit of maintenance and a bit of troubleshooting with the bike. I was gone for four minutes and then the guy said that a guy on a moped and another guy on foot just went off with it down the road.
He has stated that, in the wake of the incident, people were very helpful in helping him try and retrieve the bike, with one woman driving him around in her car and others reposting the theft on social media.
He continued: "By the time I went to go and look there was nobody to be seen. A kind woman told me to jump in her car and we went to go and see if we could find anything but unfortunately we didn't. She dropped me back off at that location at the car park and a couple of friends in the neighbourhood helped me to look as well.
"People were very helpful in the situation given what happened. It was a nightmare - I couldn't have written it!
"At first I was very calm. a long time ago I trained myself not to stress about things that are outside of my control.
"But then proceeding that, definitely a wave of depression. Today I'm not too bad - it's just a point of acceptance really.
"The company I work for, Road Angel, have been working on trackers for cars, but moving into 2023 we're designing and doing (research and development) on some state-of-the-art trackers for motorbikes, specifically for situations like this.
"And with me working here being the product marketing manager it's something that's going into overdrive now and something we're even more passionate about because it's happened to one of us - that being myself.
"The one thing that I've noticed since the bike has gone missing is that a lot of people in the UK have gone through this."
Triston has said that there is a £2,000 reward for anyone that facilitates the safe return of the bike.
A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Police said: “Officers were called to reports of a stolen motorbike on October 26 at around 6.30pm which was parked in St Wilfred’s Square. Police attended the incident and high visibility patrols carried out an extensive search of the area to locate the vehicle.
“We have also been carrying out CCTV inquiries and speaking to witnesses. This is very much an active investigation and while no arrests have yet been made, we are doing everything we can to catch the person responsible.”
Anyone with information can call 101 quoting incident 0584 of October 26, 2022 or by calling Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
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