Dashcam video captures a man on a bicycle swiping the phone from the hands of woman crossing the street in Manhattan Wednesday.
A dashcam video posted on YouTube shows the startling moment an unsuspecting New York City pedestrian crossing the street has her phone snatched out of her hands by a bicyclist zipping past her.
The man who posted the video, Brian Cohen, said he is friends with the man who recorded the incident on his dashcam as he was stopped at a red light at Avenue A and East 7th Street at about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The video shows the victim looking down at her phone as she's crossing the street in front of the car. Suddenly, a man on his bicycle appears from behind the car and reaches out and snatches the phone out of the woman's hands.
The woman pulls the hood of her jacket off her head, looks up for a split second to see the bicyclist taking off, and begins running after him. Seconds later, a man on a Citi Bike also appears from the same direction the thief came from and, throwing up his hand to stop vehicle traffic on his left, speeds up in an apparent attempt to pursue the thief.
The driver and dashcam owner begins driving after the bicyclist and the woman when the light turns green. The driver is heard telling his passenger in Cantonese he intends to follow the thief, and the woman responds, "It's really too bad about the woman's phone," according to Gothamist.
As he gets about two blocks past the light, the woman's seen still running in the street. The bicyclist-thief and the Citi Bike rider are nowhere in sight.
The driver pulls over, and the video ends.
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"We don't know the outcome," Cohen wrote on YouTube. "Hopefully she got her phone back."
Cohen said the owner of the video wanted to remain anonymous.
Police said the victim has filed a police report, and that the stolen phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. They're searching for the suspect.
