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Motorized Hoverboard-Riding Teens Punched and Robbed in Brooklyn: NYPD

By Rachel Holliday Smith | November 6, 2015 3:03pm | Updated on November 8, 2015 5:51pm
 Three hoverboards, like this one pictured, were stolen from three Crown Heights teenagers last week, police said.
Three hoverboards, like this one pictured, were stolen from three Crown Heights teenagers last week, police said.
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Flickr/Soar Boards

CROWN HEIGHTS — Police are looking for a group of thieves who swiped some high-tech scooters in the neighborhood last week.

Three men approached three teen boys who were riding motorized hoverboards on Eastern Parkway, between Brooklyn and Kingston avenues, in Crown Heights around 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, police said.

The suspects asked the boys — ages 14 and 15 — to see the hoverboards, the victims told police. When the teens refused, the men punched them and took the three scooter-like devices, worth approximately $1,700 in total.

The suspects then fled in a gray minivan eastbound on the Eastern Parkway service road, police said.

Recently, the hands-free scooters, which retail for between $200 and $1000, have recently been spotted all over the city and under the feet of lots of celebrities, from Justin Bieber to Wiz Khalifa.

This is not the first hoverboard robbery reported in Crown Heights. In August, a 24-year-old man was robbed of two of the devices on Eastern Parkway and Nostrand Avenue by a buyer from Craigslist, according to a police report.

In September, a teenager was punched and robbed of one of the devices, worth $350, in the Financial District.

The above incident is part of DNAinfo’s weekly crime blotter made from reports to the 71st Precinct in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Crown Heights.