Switched on Bikes was broken into early on Saturday morning, when a rental e-scooter and e-mountain bike were stolen.<\/p>\n
Owner Ryan O’Connell said a notification from his alarm system woke him up.<\/p>\n
Checking the security cameras in the store from his phone, he said he saw someone rolling out an e-scooter through the smashed-open front door.<\/p>\n
“So I quickly called the police and then they responded really quickly. And I also let them know that we had follow GPS trackers installed on the scooter,” he said.<\/p>\n
O’Connell stayed on the line to update the police on the goods’ location in real time.<\/p>\n
Police said the alleged offender left the scene in a vehicle with the goods, which they found within 20 minutes on Vivian St.<\/p>\n
But the driver fled when asked to stop.<\/p>\n
“I just kind of ran downstairs, got my laptop out and logged into my phone and started providing those locations. But you just want to be able to do everything really quickly,” O’Connell said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/anonymous-waist-down-image-of-young-man-in-the-park-leaning-XSYNKSEVNFALFAPS5TRFPWDF7E.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A person in a park riding their e-scooter (file image). (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n
Police said they used road spikes to stop the car near the Basin Reserve and arrest a 35-year-old man just before 5am.<\/p>\n
Within an hour of the burglary, police reunited O’Connell with the e-scooter and e-bike.<\/p>\n
“I was just really happy that everything worked out and we were able to get the items back as quickly as we did,” he said.<\/p>\n
He told RNZ the incident showed him how well his security system worked.<\/p>\n
“We had an alarm system and we had CCTV and we had a security company that helped out,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s a good validation of all of the systems that we have in place to either prevent or to respond to things like this.”<\/p>\n
He said it was satisfying being able to help police.<\/p>\n
The alleged offender is due to appear in Wellington District Court on August 10, charged with burglary by night over $5000, unlawfully taking a motor vehicle, reckless driving, failing to stop, and other charges relating to the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wellington bike shop owner has recovered more than $10,000 worth of goods by using GPS trackers in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":["post-536731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}