Don't wish to put you on a bummer, but if anyone has information about this dastardly deed.......... call the cops for God's sake!
Two heartless boys left a Toronto great-grandmother with nowhere to go when they stole her much-needed scooter 10 days before Christmas.
Short of breath from emphysema and a weak heart, lung cancer survivor Irene McGrath, 70, left her electric ride in front of the Value Village store for 25 minutes while buying small Christmas gifts.
“The store is too small for my scooter, so I had to leave it outside,” she said Friday.
“It has a lock but it’s hard for me to bend down,” McGrath said.
At 7:10 p.m. Wednesday, when she carried out her $4 worth of stocking stuffers, the red $3,500 Fortress 1700 FS was no longer parked outside the Danforth and Woodbine Aves. store.
McGrath got it in 2008 with government and Hardship Fund aid, “but I can’t afford to replace it,” the pensioner said.
She alerted a friend working in the store she visits regularly, then shuffled outside to search but it hadn’t been taken for a joyride as she hoped.
“The police came in about 15 minutes,” McGrath said.
Daughter Liz Landrean, who shares her mom’s apartment, soon joined her.
Const. Sean Sullivan offered to drive McGrath home, but a neighbour “came down to give me a lift home.
“She’s well-thought of in our building,” Landrean said.
Det. Tom Emery credited the Sun website story with an afternoon tip he hopes will lead to the scooter’s recovery.
“It’s quite troubling, especially at this time of year, that someone would steal the mode of transportation of a person obviously with a disability,” he said at 55 Division.
McGrath came from Scotland in the mid-1950s, met her future husband after living with her grandmother, and had her first of four children at age 19.
Always active — “I used to love to rhumba” — she tries to retain a positive outlook despite health problems.
McGrath also survived being knocked off her scooter in 2009 by a motorist, luckily suffering only “a few abrasions.” The driver was charged.
After learning of her scooter plight, a kindly neighbour loaned his late wife’s older model but its battery “won’t keep a charge,” she said.
“I don’t want to risk using it,” McGrath said.
Though stuck in her fifth-floor Danforth Ave.-Main St. area flat, she’s been promised a lift to visit another daughter at Christmas, “otherwise, I can’t get around.”
The Sun also received a call from a woman offering to help, which made McGrath smile.
She vowed not to let the theft get her down and said she’d even forgive the thieves, “if they’re young” — and return her scooter.
Her daughter is less generous, calling the theft “appalling”.
ian.robertson@sunmedia.ca
Anyone with information is asked to call police at 416-808-5504 or anonymously, Crime Stoppers, 416-222-TIPS (8477).
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