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A woman from Bristol has described the moment she stole her own bicycle back in an audacious sting operation from the man selling it on Facebook, hours after it was stolen from her.

Jenni Morton-Humphreys planned the sting after arranging to meet a man selling her bike on a street corner the morning after it was nicked in the centre of Bristol.

Pretending to take it for ‘a test ride’, she pedalled away as fast as she could, leaving the man who probably stole her bike dumbfounded in the road.

She was warned by police not to undertake the operation – but pressed ahead anyway after officers declined to accompany her on the sting, or arrest him and retrieve the bike themselves.

The 30-year-old was worried her bike would be sold to someone else so said she had to act fast to get it back.

The saga began when Jenni locked her bike up behind the Watershed in the city centre, and went for brunch at the Mud Dock nearby on Sunday morning, followed by a day out in town.

She returned later to find it had been stolen and reported it to the police. She also put a picture of the bike on the Bristol Cycling Facebook page, and appealed for anyone who saw it to get in touch.

One man – who shall be known as Chris for the purposes of this story – spotted it. Fuelled by a sense of justice, he scouted around the internet and discovered that within a couple of hours, Jenni’s bike was indeed being brazenly advertised for sale on one of Facebook’s for sale pages.

He contacted Jenni and, despite being complete strangers, they together hatched an elaborate plan to get her expensive Cube brand German bike back.

Chris contacted the seller of the stolen bike and said his sister wanted a bike. He arranged for his sister – who was actually Jenni – to go and meet the seller, who called himself Bebop on Facebook.

Bebop eventually fixed a date and a place – 9am on a street corner just off Stapleton Road in Easton on the Monday morning – and said it would actually be his friend called ‘Rocksteady’ who would be there with the bike.

Jennie called the police back with the information, in the hope that they would then step in. But while they were interested in investigating further, they said they would not be joining Jenni at the sting and discouraged her from stepping into a potentially dangerous situation.

She decided to go anyway and made an elaborate plan. A friend called Matt accompanied her and the pair waited in a nearby café around two hours before Chris said ‘Rocksteady’ had contacted him to say he was there with the bike.

Matt walked far enough ahead to not be seen with Jenni and Jenni approached her bike, was certain it was hers and her plan swung into action.

(Image: Michael Lloyd)

“I pretended to be interested and asked silly questions about the bike,” she said. “I said the saddle was too high, and asked if I could get on it to test it out.

“I made sure I had nothing on me, no possessions at all apart from the stuff in my hands – and they were a cigarette packet and a set of keys. I handed them to this guy as I got on the bike and said ‘here, hold my stuff’.

“That meant he let go of the bike for the first time. I wobbled off a bit on the bike and then when I was a couple of yards away I just went for it,” she added. “I pedalled as fast as I could.

“I didn’t look back to see if they were chasing me. My main thought was that I was worried because I didn’t really know where I was, where I was going, or the area at all, and I was worried that I might have to go back that way or end up going round in a circle.

“But it was fine because quite soon, I hit a big roundabout and was able to find a different way back to the city centre, so I wasn’t scared at that point,” she told the Bristol Post.

There were two things for ‘Rocksteady’ to ponder as he watched the bike disappear into the distance. Jenni’s friend Matt was there to report that he stood mystified for many seconds, and then someone else shouted ‘she’s not coming back’.

Then, when he checked the valuables Jenni had given him, he found the cigarette packet was empty except for a broken lighter inside and the keys were obviously useless to him. What he would never have known is, with delicious irony, they were actually the keys to the chain that was cut when the bike was stolen around 18 hours earlier.

The second was the eventual knowledge that he’d been stung by the owner of the bike. That came when Bebop messaged Chris to complain that his ‘sister’ had stolen his bike.

“I need 95 quid lively Chris,” said Bebop. “She’s probably took it straight home,” said Chris in reply. “Not surprised though, because it is her bike that was stolen yesterday.

“Lesson to be learned son. Don’t steal from the cycling community for a quick fix. You played yourself,” he added.

There was one final nice surprise for Jenni when she got home with her bike at the end of her adventure. “They had spruced the bike up a bit overnight – they’d even fixed the front light,” she said.

“The police had one of the guy’s numbers, but said they couldn’t do anything because he’d basically said he’d bought it the night before in a pub, so no one was actually brought to justice over it. I’m just glad I got it back,” she added.

The steal and the 're-steal' originally happened in April in Bristol, and emerged earlier this month through Jenni's friend at the LiteLok website. You can follow Jenni on Instagram here.