Linkblurt:
College student’s wheelchair stolen from campus
A disabled college student is having trouble getting around campus, after someone stole his motorized wheelchair. […] Horus had locked it up and left it charging overnight. When he returned to campus, it was gone – all that was left was the charger. […] Horus’ wheelchair cost about $5,000 and that means whoever stole it faces grand theft charges.
“It’s really difficult for me to replace it. To replace it, it would take me like a year,” Horus said.
Boys customized wheelchair taken from in front of home
The family of an 8-year-old boy whose wheelchair vanished from the front of their home is hoping the person who took it will bring it back. The family said that wheelchair is a lifeline for their son Mohammed who suffers from a crippling disorder that he developed when he was just three years old. […]
Mohammed cannot leave his home without the wheelchair. He has already missed two days of school. It is custom-made and costs about $4,000.
Mobility scooters driven like dodgems and destroyed
FOUR elderly couples say they have been stranded in their homes after their mobility scooters were taken and driven “like dodgems” – before being destroyed. They disappeared from properties in Midlothian over the last week, leaving disabled residents unable to leave their homes. […]
Jimmy O’Donnell, 71, also from Newtongrange, had his mobility scooter taken from his garden shed and later found by police smashed up. His wife Heather, 62, said: “Jimmy won’t be able to go down the street without the scooter – he will be housebound.”
Mother stranded as wheelchair stolen
Thieves have stolen a disabled mother’s wheelchair from the doorstep of a Wolverhampton house, leaving her distraught and unable to move.
Appealing for the return of her “lifeline”, 49-year-old Karen Hughes says she has been reduced to crawling on her hands and knees to get about and is having to be cared for by family members. Health chiefs are hoping to find her a replacement but warn it could be five months before money can be found for the specialised equipment.
Cruel thieves target Liam’s special bike again
A Galway man with a rare medical condition had his only viable means of transport cruelly stolen from him after a night out with friends at the weekend.
Castlegar resident Liam Cullinane was diagnosed with Listerial Meningitis, a severe and rare form of the disease, in 1993. Since then he has had problems with walking, which has made his specially designed three-wheeled bicycle an essential means of transport for him.
Due to the rareness of Liam’s illness, his bike is the only one of its kind in Ireland. It was just a few months old, after a crash he had in March of last year resulted in him having to get a replacement, which took over a year for it to be custom built and delivered to him from Wales. The bicycle cost Liam €3,000, and other alterations made to it when it was serviced just two weeks ago cost him a further €180.
Thieves make off with wheelchair in Ironville
An electric wheelchair and charger were stolen from a shed at a house in Ironville between 2am and 7.30am on Tuesday, October 6.
OAP’s mobility scooter stolen:
An elderly Exeter man has had his mobility scooter stolen. Roy Long, 83, of St David’s, bought the vehicle for £950 this year because he struggles to walk and says it played a vital part in his quality of life.
Mobility scooter stolen from shed
The red-coloured scooter was stolen from the garden shed at a house on Holborn Place, West Denton. The elderly occupier, who the scooter belongs to, discovered that the shed had been broken into on Sunday.
Mobility scooter stolen and torched in County Durham
Thieves made off with a pensioner’s mobility scooter from outside his County Durham home – before setting fire to the vehicle and abandoning it.
Mobility scooter stolen from outside flat.
The scooter had been left overnight outside the flat in Parmiter House, a secured sheltered accommodation in Arlington Avenue, and was stolen at around 8.45am. The owner is disabled […]
Mobility scooter stolen from owner’s home in Hythe
Kent Police in Hythe are appealing for witnesses following the theft of a mobility scooter from a front garden of a house in Cinque Ports Avenue, between Sunday 4 January and Monday 5 January.
The scooter is described as bright red and battery powered, and is worth £2,000.
Every time I read one of these, my heart cries.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Are we all still here? 
Otterday and Open Thread 
So my plans for writing today didn’t quite work out 
Otterday! And Open Thread 
Hoyden About Town 
People can be such callous shits. I can hear the bastards laughing about depriving PWD of these essential tools. Stabbity.
Hideous. Callous with a side of mockery.
That’s just awful, cumulatively horrible. People who pick on those who are vulnerable make me despair for the future of humanity.
The amount of time it takes to get these things replaced! Even if no callous bastards were involved, for instance in case of accident, it seems people can be waiting absurd amounts of time whether for funding or custom made chairs/bikes.
*Remembers with a guilty start the hoops and waits involved in replacing hearing aids in my pre-child career, (especially for those in remote areas or requiring a home visit)*
*shakes head in despair at humanity*
My first reaction (after the obvious “BASTARDS!”) was: why does it take so fucking long to get the items replaced? Especially the “it will take 5 months to find the money…”
Really? It takes NHS 5 months to find 5,000 pounds to purchase an essential piece of medical equipment?
Sheesh. No wonder the system is in such a state …
It makes my gut twist to read about people so casually depriving us of our hard-earned mobility.
This is why I’m requesting a wheelchair desk in my classes from the university when my powerchair (hopefully) arrives in a month or two. I’d far rather park in the hall and use a regular desk, especially given the space constraints of our classrooms, but I’m terrified of leaving a $3000 piece of equipment where it can be picked up and walked away with; literally- it’s very lightweight.
It’s already taken three months to get to this point; after a doctor’s visit, waiting for the service provider to meet with me, having them come again when the first trial model was broken, getting more paperwork and confirmation from my doctor, now hopefully getting approval from my insurance company, appealing if I don’t, and then finally ordering the darned thing and waiting for it to ship… It’s a ridiculously long process, when I’ve needed this chair since school started in September. As it is, I manage to drag myself to my nearest class and a nice young man from Disability Support comes with a crappy old hospital chair to take me to and from the class building I could never make it to otherwise (since they wouldn’t move my class). It’s not a particularly pleasant experience, and I will be so happy when it’s no longer necessary.
I can only start to imagine how I’d feel if someone took that mobility away after I’ve waited so long and worked so hard for it.
Lynda Hopgood: I strongly recommend reading Mariness’ “How not to buy a wheelchair” to get an idea on what it can be like. (In this case, with Cigna health insurance in Florida – she’s one of the ‘lucky’ ones.)
This is so awful. What kind of a person would steal someone’s wheelchair?!
This post hurts me on so many levels. My scooter is my key to freedom and independence, without it I would be housebound. For the life of me I cannot understand what these people were thinking. I believe that these “pranks” are often reduced to a joke because they don’t realize the real damage of what they have done. Stealing is wrong but this has no justification. It is just plain cruel and breaks my heart in ways that I cannot express.
This, just…what, exactly, does one do with a mobility scooter or wheelchair after stealing it from someone who needs it? I suppose there’s a black market for everything, but this is truly upsetting. And it seems like there ought to be additional penalties under the law for depriving someone of mobility, above and beyond basic theft penalties.
What disgusting human beings! I really cannot come up with words that are strong enough to fully describe the nauseating horror I feel for these miscreants who have deprived so many people of something THEY take for granted!
Another one just dropped into my feed.
”Mobility scooter stolen following crash”
And another today.
Disabled Woman’s Scooter Stolen At Mall
I’m with meloukhia on this one, on all points.
Another one. Not a mobility device, but an assistive (?) device that is critical to this boy’s ability to communicate.
This is so callously cruel.