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NHK executive stole bike to ‘get home faster’

The Shizuoka Prefecture bureau of NHK whose male deputy director was arrested on Friday for allegedly stealing a high school student's bike
NHK bureau in Shizuoka Prefecture whose male deputy director was arrested on Friday for allegedly stealing a high school student’s bike

SHIZUOKA (TR) – The male deputy director of the Shizuoka branch of Japan’s public broadcaster NHK was arrested on Friday for stealing a high schooler’s bike because he “wanted to get home quickly.”

Shizuoka police arrested Tatsuhiko Kobayashi, 53, on theft charges for allegedly stealing an 18-year-old high school student’s bicycle parked on a street in Shizuoka City sometime at night on the evening of December 18 last year, the Asahi Shimbun reports (September 23).

Kobayashi turned himself him in on Thursday night after initially telling a police officer who found the stolen bicycle sitting in the parking lot of his residence that he “found it abandoned in a junkyard,” admitting “actually, I did steal it.”

Kobayashi taped over a part of the bicycle showing its actual owner’s details and their high school sticker, and used it to commute to work, police said.

An NHK official said the suspect will be “strictly dealt with after we investigate the facts.”