HOKKAIDO (TR) – A blink of any eye.
Well, not exactly, but it didn’t take Mikio Tanaka much longer to snatch a bag containing 7,400 yen from the driver’s seat of an unoccupied taxi parked at Odori Park in Sapporo’s Chuo Ward on Tuesday, according to Hokkaido Prefectural Police.
In footage taken from a camera mounted in the dashboard of the cab, a man believed to be Tanaka, of no known occupation, is shown approaching the vehicle from behind at just past 9:00 a.m. He then enters from the front passenger door, reaches across to the driver’s seat and snatches the bag — a crime completed in exactly 11 seconds.
During the incident, the driver, who left the cab unlocked, was using a bathroom, police said.
Upon his arrest on Wednesday, the suspect, 62, denied the allegations. “I have no response,” the suspect was quoted by police.
