NAKHON RATCHASIMA - Seven high school students were detained by police on Thursday after stealing illegally-modified motorcycles that had been parked in a storage area at a police station in Phimai district.
Seven schoolboys were detained by police after stealing illegally-modified motorcycles from a police station in Phimai district. Photo by Prasit Tangprasert
The motorcycles disappeared from a storage area for confiscated motorcycles at the back of the station in the early hours of Thursday morning, said Pol Col Boonsong Khunkhawng, chief of Phimai police station.
The theft was discovered after officers checked the number of bikes in the morning and found that seven had gone missing, he said.
Police found two of the stolen bikes abandoned in roadside bushes, alongside two school shirts and a school bag, near the entrance to Ha Roen village in tambon Nai Muang shortly before noon, after a tip-off from a resident.
Police inspecting the scene said names on the shirts matched the school notebooks inside the bag. The notebook also bore the name of a school in Muang district.
Police tracked down the suspects to the school. The seven, aged between 13 and 15, are all studying in Matthayom 1-3, Pol Col Boonsong said.
A 14-year-old boy thought to be the leader of the group confessed to stealing the motorcycles. He said he persuaded his friends to steal them because the bikes had been left on the police station’s parking grounds for a long time, so he thought they were unwanted.
Police were told two members of the group scouted out the storage area, used a bolt cutter to cut metal chains attached to two motorbikes and towed them to a nearby location where the other five were waiting on motorcycles.
The gang rode off with the stolen bikes in tow, but later returned to the station to take another five motorcycles, because police were yet to notice the disappearance of the first two.
The boy said it was the first time he and his friends had committed a crime. They planned to modify and use the stolen bikes for street racing, and to trade bike parts, before spending the proceeds at an online gaming store.
Police later recovered the other five bikes.