A 78-year-old Woodend man has been robbed of his bike at Eastgate Mall.

Alan spends most days out in Canterbury riding different tracks and trails, alternating between his push bike and his electric bike, enjoying keeping fit in his retirement, planning trips weeks in advance.

He had visited the Eastgate Mall’s security team a week earlier to ask if he could park his car at the mall the following week — and where the best place to park would be, to leave it there safely while on his bike ride. They directed him to a quiet part of the carpark, adjacent to Chelsea Street.

On Friday 6 October, Alan had been on a 6km ride around Hagley Park on his push bike, then went to Eastgate to park his car for the second ride of the day.

He then cycled on his e-bike to Sumner and back, returning just after 4pm. “It was a great bike ride. It was fantastic,” Alan said. He had planned on taking a third ride out at New Brighton later that day, before the robbery happened.

Once returning from Sumner, Alan took the push bike out from his boot, propping it up against the car, so he could put the e-bike in.

“I was pulling the cycle rack out of the boot and out of no where this low life appeared right beside me, grabbing my bike and jumping over the garden with it — riding away furiously,” he said.

He was about 6ft tall, Caucasian, slim build with black facial hair, and a black hoodie up on his head.

“He said nothing to me. I yelled at him, and there was a neighbour across the road that witnessed the whole thing, yelling at the thug too — ‘You bastard!’ she called after him.”

“I was shocked but mainly angry that someone would do something like that. What a creep. What’s he doing out there? Going through life, stealing other people’s things. To me, he was trained to do what he did so quickly,” he said.

Alan went into the mall security, told them what happened, they wrote down all the info and showed him it happening on the mall’s security cameras.

Alan has ties to the mall, dating back to 1990, spending years working as a custodian, as well as playing ‘Santa’ there for more than a decade.

It was a metallic black Giant push bike. Police case number 231007/7879.