A great-grandmother left shoplifters in her wake when she chased them across a garden centre car park on a mobility scooter.
Doris Pemberton, 87, gave pursuit after two men grabbed a hanging basket from her trolley outside the Meadowfield Garden Centre. She reached what witnesses called “a very respectable four miles an hour”.
Dozens of shoppers filmed the chase on their phones. One clip, watched more than two million times, shows Doris weaving between parked cars as she shouts: “Oi! That’s my begonia!”
“I only wanted my basket back”
Doris, a retired dinner lady, told us: “I did not think. I just saw them with my basket and my foot went down. It does not go very fast, but I had right on my side.”
The men dropped the basket as they ran for a white van, which narrowly avoided a trolley shelter. Doris got the basket back and, she says, only lost a few petals.
Garden centre assistant Tom Sykes, 19, said he watched the whole thing from the till. “I have never seen anything like it,” he said. “She went round the roundabout twice. I think she was enjoying it.”
Police appeal
A police spokesman said officers were examining CCTV and would like to speak to two men in dark jackets. “We would not recommend that anyone else chases suspects on a mobility scooter,” he added.
Doris has since been offered a free bunch of dahlias and a trophy from the garden centre’s customer service team. She says she will take the dahlias.
“The trophy can go in the shed,” she said.
