A man dressed as Batman chased down a handbag thief in Norwich city centre before scaling a wall to retrieve the stolen bag.
Sonni Mason, 25, was wearing a homemade caped-crusader outfit for a friend's superhero-themed fancy dress party when he leapt into action on Saturday, September 19.
Chase through the streets
The café worker, who had travelled from London, was queuing outside a bar on Queen Street with friends when a stranger joined the line and started chatting. The stranger suddenly accused two nearby women of stealing cigarettes from him, then grabbed one of their handbags and ran off.
Mason chased the suspect through the streets in his full Batman costume. His friends, dressed as Mister Fantastic, Poison Ivy and Cyclops, also joined the pursuit, forming a makeshift Justice League. They flagged down police officers to alert them.
Wall recovery at Norwich Cathedral
While officers caught up, the thief had ditched the bag. A tip-off led Mason and his pals to a high wall outside the grounds of Norwich Cathedral, where the handbag had been thrown.
Mason tried to use a homemade "grappling hook" fashioned from a recycled toilet roll tube to fetch the bag. When that failed, a friend gave him a boost and he scaled the brick wall, then tossed the handbag back down to its relieved owner.
Intact contents and viral video
Everything inside the bag was still intact. Mason later posted a video to TikTok showing him standing on top of the wall surveying the scene as a crowd cheers, racking up hundreds of thousands of views.
He said: "I hope I can inspire being to be a little bit more like Batman. Not so much the running around in the dark in a costume but helping others out."
"It was really unexpected and I didn't expect to be scaling up a wall," the hero added. "I'm a bog-standard guy, to be honest. I currently work at a cafe, but I'm a creative at the core. I love films and have four or five years of experience in that industry."
He added: "There's not a lot of good things going on in the world. At the time, being able to get someone's bag back, make sure she could go home safe and see someone happy again felt good."
A Norfolk Police spokesperson said: "Officers on routine night-time economy patrols in Norwich were approached by a member of the public, on Saturday, September 19, who requested help to find a missing bag. Following enquiries at the scene, the bag was located with all of its contents intact and subsequently returned to its owner."
