A 53-year-old man was arrested after two bike thefts, one of which he claimed was inspired by irony.

On Friday at about 2 p.m., Department of Public Safety officers arrested Eduardo Stith outside of Crouse Hospital’s emergency entrance on Crouse Drive, and charged him with criminal mischief, possession of burglary tools, trespassing and grand larceny.

Police arrested him shortly after he had just stolen a $1,370 bicycle outside of Archbold Gymnasium, DPS said.

Stith said his motive for the theft was irony.

“While on the campus, I looked at a bike rack and saw this really expensive bike with a cheap lock,” he wrote in a criminal statement on Friday. “It seemed ironic that such an expensive bike would have such a cheap lock, so I decided to cut the lock with the bolt cutters that I had found earlier.”

DPS officers have also linked Stith to a second bicycle theft on Thursday when he stole a bicycle worth $700 from the racks outside of Kimmel Hall at about 1:15 p.m.

Stith, who claimed mental illness in his defense and listed the Rescue Mission as his home address, explained the entire situation as a coincidence in his statement.

The only reason he had bolt cutters that day was because he found them in bushes near South State Street and Erie Boulevard earlier, and he had stumbled onto Syracuse University’s campus while walking around, he wrote in his statement. SU’s campus is about 1.4 miles away from where Stith said he found the bolt cutters.

DPS officers received a report of a bike theft at about 2 p.m. on Friday, when staff members in the Physics Building noticed Stith crouching beside the bike rack outside Archbold with a set of bolt cutters. The two officers later arrested him while he was riding the bicycle, with the broken lock and bolt cutters in his backpack.

“Upon interviewing the suspect, he did admit to arriving on campus with a pair of bolt cutters, looking for an expensive bike with a cheap lock secured to a bike rack,” said Hannah Warren, DPS’s public information officer, in an email.

Stith denies stealing other bicycles, and wrote in his statement the theft on Friday was the first time he had stolen a bicycle on SU’s campus.

His next court appearance is on Thursday, and he is being held on a $10,000 bail. He is also banned from returning to the university’s campus, according to his statement.

Published on October 15, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Alfred: alng@syr.edu

@alfredwkng