Watch driver's high-speed chase of van in Shifnal after alleged tool theft
A tradesman who chased a van through Shifnal at high speed after he accused the drivers of stealing his tools has had a video of the pursuit go viral.
Dezzie Dodd said that when he saw who he believed were the thieves responsible for taking tools from his van, he decided "he wasn't going to let them get away", so the self-employed contractor decided to give pursuit as wife Kylie sat in the passenger seat.
Phone footage from the incident on January 8 has now gone viral after it was posted to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and it has received thousands of views, likes and comments.
In the short edited video, Dezzie can be heard speaking on the phone to police, sharing information about his location as he pursues the alleged thieves.
"I wasn't going to let them get away with it," he told the Shropshire Star. "I was enraged."
He said that while he didn't see the two men in the van steal from his vehicle, he discovered his van had been broken into and £1,600 worth of tools had gone missing, so decided to go and look for the perpetrators.
When he drove up the high street and "made eye contact" with two men looking at another vehicle, he said the pair jumped in their own van and "went like a bat out of hell".
"I knew then it had to be them," said Dezzie, who gave chase for around five minutes before he lost them on the way to Tong.
"I wasn't going to let it go," he added. "I was driving quite crazy but I work hard for a living and what with the way life is now, with the cost of living and things going up all the time - it was the last straw."
He branded the suspected thieves "disgraceful" for targeting self-employed van drivers and said the police needed to do more.
"They read me my rights when they phoned me as I had made threats over the phone, and they said my tools were likely already sold," said Dezzie.
"It's disgraceful. When you are small it costs more to insure the tools than they are often worth, so when you lose them it affects how you can do your job," he said.
"In many ways I am quite relieved I did not catch them because if I had got hold of them it would have been me that was stuck."
He added that while the number plates of the van were believed to "cloned", tradesmen, especially in the Shifnal area, should keep an eye out for the "distinctive" white van seen in his video.
A spokesperson for West Mercia Police said: "On Friday 8 January at 2.35pm we received a report of a van that had been broken into. The victim was pursuing a vehicle which he believed the suspects were in. He was advised to keep himself safe and remain within the laws of the road.
"Enquiries in to the theft are ongoing.
"It’s always disappointing when we hear that victims of crime are unhappy with the service provided by us and we would encourage anyone who is unsatisfied to make a formal complaint so that it can be looked in to."