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Man in bathrobe fights thief, recovers stolen items

Posted at 1:53 PM, Nov 29, 2017
and last updated 2017-11-29 13:53:21-05

TOOELE, Utah -- A Utah man wearing only his bathrobe tackled a thief who was rifling through possessions in his car.

"When I saw him, he was inside like this," Mark Miner told KTSU, demonstrating what the thief looked like: half in and half out the door.

Miner said he tackled the man from behind when he tried to run away.

"This one is painful," Miner said while pointing to all his cuts and scrapes.

But during the altercation, Miner managed to wrestle away the thief's backpack. It just so happened to belong to a local high school student.

"It wasn't here this morning," Ian Staten said while pointing to a bare spot on his car seat. He had left his backpack, his wallet, and his brand-new skis in the car Monday night.

Sometime between midnight and 2:00 a.m, his car was broken into, and by 5 a.m, he woke up to a text message from police with a picture of his backpack.

Miner said he was glad he was able to get Staten's backpack back, but when he looks back on what happened, he said he would have handled it differently.

"I wouldn’t do what I did again," Miner confirms. "I would call the police. If I would have called them when I first saw, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have a road rash now."