An Indonesian man from the island of Batam has been dubbed “Spider-Man” by local media outlets, though, if the accusations against him are true, he would be quite the opposite of a friendly neighborhood hero.
On Wednesday, an alleged thief performed some outrageous parkour-like stunts while trying to outmaneuver dozens of angry locals who were chasing him. In a video taken during the incident that has gone viral, the alleged thief can be seen coming down from the rooftop of a building as his pursuers try to hit him with sticks. He then skillfully wedges his way down a narrow gap between that building and an adjacent hotel, never misplacing a step as he slips inside the hotel through what appears to be a window.
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Unfortunately for him, dozens more from the angry mob were already waiting on the ground floor and caught him in the hotel. An extended version of the above video shows the mob taking the alleged thief outside and beating him senseless.
According to the local police, after giving the alleged thief a beating, the mob turned him in to authorities. However, in a rather disturbing twist, nobody wanted to file charges against him as they had no evidence that he actually stole anything.
“The alleged culprit has been released, as nobody filed a complaint and nobody claims to have lost anything. But we’re still monitoring [the alleged thief],” Lubuk Baja Precinct Crime Investigation Unit Head Haris Baltasar Nasution said as quoted by Tribun.
The police did not say, other than the unsubstantiated accusation of stealing, what could have caused the locals to chase and violently beat the alleged thief.
Cases of horrific mob violence are not that rare in Indonesia, and stories of alleged thieves being beaten to death have made many headlines in the past (though rarely have they led to arrests or serious punishments for the vigilantes). One of the most brutal incidents in recent years was that of a man who was beaten and burned alive after he was accused of stealing loudspeakers from a mosque in Bekasi, West Java.
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