BY MARK McKELVEY
Seeing red mist that a couple of "scallies" tried to steal a laptop from her Belfast shop, Lorraine McAleer (26) from Omagh managed to chase after them and retrieve her property, being left with a few cuts and bruises for her efforts.
The incident occurred last Thursday around 3pm when two teenage boys, wearing black baseball caps, with one also wearing a pair of dark sun glasses entered her shop, Learning Space, an educational toy store that Lorraine recently opened in Fountain Centre, College Street, Belfast with help from her younger sister Mary.
Lorraine explained her harrowing tale, "I was standing by the till, when these two really dodgy looking boys entered the shop. They approached the counter and when I asked, "are you OK" one of them immediately grabbed my laptop and they both ran for the exit.
"He starred at me for a second as he grabbed it and I thought no way, so my reaction was to chase after them. I remember thinking I was not allowing him to get away with my laptop and knew I would get it back."
As the two assailants left, they split up running in different directions, but Lorraine was quick on the heels of the one with her laptop managing to catch a hold of him within about 20 to 30 metres from her shop. Instinctively she grabbed him from behind.
A struggle for the laptop commenced with the thief, which resulted in Lorraine being banged against a shop window before she was knocked to the ground.
Despite this assault, Lorraine was determined not to relinquish her grip, and kept her arms wrapped tightly around the thief's legs. After this struggle of about 15 seconds that resulted in Lorraine being left with a badly bruised back, arm and cut to her hand, the thief shouted, "take it, take it" and ran off with nothing, as construction and shop workers approached to offer Lorraine assistance. Police were on the scene shortly after and the traumatic events were captured on CCTV.
Lorraine set up Learning Space in October last year after the former teacher returned from travelling where she witnessed similar businesses around the world so decided to capitalise on a niche in the market and introduce this concept of learning though specialist toys to the North of Ireland.
As The Learning Space team had been working hard on their launch of their new website – www.learningspaceni.co.uk – and a lot of important files where on the laptop. s
"If it was anything else I probably would have thought twice about chasing after them, but it was too important to lose." said Lorraine.
When it was suggested that Lorraine should be given a bravery award, she joked, "more like a fool award" as she said it could have been a lot worse if the thief had pulled a knife on her.
