Another new iPhone is on the streets and it’s the type of event when police brace themselves for a spike in thefts and assaults. So it was only a matter of time before the iPhone X would work its way into a crime news headline.
A man in Georgia suffered a broken collarbone after wrestling with a thief who ran off with an iPhone X he was trying to resell.
David Stowers had placed an ad on the LetGo app and thought he had taken the proper precaution by meeting the suspect in public. They met in a cafe area of a grocery store in Kennesaw where Stowers was hoping to flip his iPhone X for $1,300.
“We sit down (and) I take the phone out of the bag,” Stowers told Atlanta television station WSB-TV. He’s looking at it. I thought something was wrong. I got a weird feeling like it’s not going to end well.”
The suspect dashed off with the phone, but Stowers was able to catch up when the store’s automatic doors didn’t open quick enough. Stowers tackled the man and the two wrestled. Stowers said his collarbone broke when the suspect slammed him to the ground.
Two store employees came to Stowers’ aid but were soon joined by an alleged getaway driver. Kennesaw Police arrived in time to stop the fight and arrested the alleged thief, Kievan McGhee, and the accused’s driver, Michael Rogers.
Both men remain jailed.
During past Apple product launches, police departments from San Francisco to Chicago and New York City have issued public warnings for people to take precautions with their new iPhones.
In 2013, San Francisco police partially blamed a spate of muggings and robberies related to electronic devices, like a new iPhone and iPad, to that city’s sharpest increase in crime in five years. California lawmakers had even tried to make kill switches mandatory on all smartphones.
It was unclear from news reports whether the iPhone X was damaged in the scuffle.
Source: phoneArena
