December 23rd 2023.
The Banksy artwork that was put up on a South London road was stolen less than an hour after it was put up. The artwork, a traffic stop sign covered with three aircraft resembling military drones, was confirmed by Banksy himself in a social media post on Friday.
Witnesses at the scene reported seeing two men taking down the sign. One of them was standing on a Lime Bike in order to access the sign more easily.
Alex, 26, was one of the witnesses. He said, "We were all sort of admiring it and taking pictures. This guy comes up and grabs it, we watched in awe as he bashed it. He put the Lime bike under the sign, stood on the Lime bike and tried to hit the sign, he hit it with his hands and it wasn’t going anywhere. He fell off the Lime bike at one point. He disappeared and went away and about two minutes later he reappeared with bolt cutters and just sort of tried and tried and tried while everyone was watching."
Another witness added that they watched the thief disappear after failing to prise the sign off with their hands before returning shortly afterwards with bolt cutters. They said, "He must’ve lived locally, because he was only gone a few minutes. A few of us were just stood around watching while he did it. Some people tried shouting at him to stop but he didn’t pay us any attention. There was even a man from Southwark Council sat there in a van but he didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was just there to observe. He even took a few pictures of it himself”.
The man was eventually captured and arrested by police after the incident. This is a developing news story, so stay tuned for more updates. Follow The Agency on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news updates. You can now also get The Agency articles sent straight to your device. Sign up for our daily push alerts here.
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