Recovery Description

Someone contacted me this morning (less than 24 hours after my bike was stolen) who had been looking to buy a bike and saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace. Thinking it looked suspicious because it was a very good deal and posted by a user with no profile details other than name, he looked on stolen-bikes.co.uk and found my post that matched the description. Realising it was my bike in the ad, I immediately arranged to meet the seller a couple of hours later. He refused to meet anywhere other than Caledonian Road Underground and would only accept cash. In the meantime I phoned the police looking after my case, as well as phoning 101, who both said they would try to help but couldn't guarantee an officer would be available. On the way there, my friend and I stopped at a police station (Islington) in person to ask for an escort but no one would help. We went to meet the seller at the agreed time unaccompanied with the intention to at least get some photo evidence, but luckily when we arrived there were several police officers having a break nearby. I approached them and explained I was about to meet the person selling my bike, and asked them to watch to check I was safe. When the guy came out from an alley with my bike, I took it from him to check over and distracted him by talking while the police officers approached us and arrested him. His name on Facebook was Steve Murray and he was offering other bikes to sell, which I will inform the police of when they get back to me for my statement, so hopefully others can recover theirs. Shout out to the guy who checked on here and notified me of the ad, I hope this is helpful to others.