Video: brazen thief wielding power tool cuts bike lock in SF

This still was taken from a Nest Cam security video of a bike theft...

A man who stole a woman’s bicycle using a power tool, setting off an eruption of sparks and plenty of noise, apparently wasn’t concerned about the numerous onlookers on a busy stretch of Valencia Street in San Francisco or the fact that he was stealing it in broad daylight.

The entire incident Friday evening was caught on two Nest cameras that belong to Stage Werx, a theater in the Mission District, according to the theater’s owner, Ty Mckenzie. The bicycle belonged to a woman who had gone to see a show at the theater, Mckenzie said.

In the footage, a man walking with a cane approached the bicycle, which was locked to a sidewalk bike rack. The video shows him digging through his backpack and pulling out a handheld tool to cut through the lock, creating a burst of sparks, as several people passed by.

“Is that your bike?” a bicyclist asks as he finishes up, according to the footage. The man tells her, yes, it is his bike.

After the thief walked away, the woman turned to another witness and said, “Well, it looks like he just stole that bike.”

Mckenzie said the security cameras have caught all sorts of “weird stuff,” like a completely nude man who recently walked out of his car to smoke a cigarette, wandered around and then drove off.

The bike’s owner filed a police report online, but her property has yet to be recovered, said Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman. He added that he had never seen someone brazenly steal a bike in front of witnesses with a tool like that.

“Oh my goodness, did you see those sparks flying?” he said. “It’s still daylight and he didn’t seem to care one bit. It’s very sad.”

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov