iPad Thieves Rip Off Part Of Man's Finger

DENVER (CBS4)

 

Bill Jordan talks with CBS4's Tom Mustin

A brazen theft in the Cherry Creek Mall left the victim with a permanent injury to his hand. He had just bought an iPad as a favor for a friend.

Bill Jordan told CBS4 he moved his family to Colorado from New Jersey 15 years ago to get away from a crime there. Now after the iPad theft, he said his life and the life of his family will never be the same.

"I saw just a bone, all the skin and tendons and everything were off," Jordan said, describing the violent robbery that tore off part of his finger.

"It's like a bad dream," he said.

Last Thursday afternoon the 59-year-old Aurora man walked into the Apple store to pick up an iPad for a co-worker.

"I had been asked by one of my colleagues in Canada to pick up an iPad for someone who is being promoted."

Jordan left the store with his iPad bag tied around his hand. Unreleased surveillance film shows two young men following him.

"The film shows them walking right behind me down the stairs as I was going out the store."

A few feet from the doors to the parking garage Jordan felt a violent tugging at his arm. He looked down and saw a young man trying to grab his bag.

"He was almost sitting on the ground he was pulling so hard and it was still tied around my fingers; and it wouldn't come off and then finally he gave it one big jerk; and that's when he stripped the skin off my pinky and it went right down to the bone."

The robber grabbed the iPad and ran out of the mall.

Jordan said he went into shock and used napkins from a food vendor to try and stop the bleeding. Paramedics rushed him to a hand surgeon who told him part of his left pinky would have to be amputated.

Now with his hand covered in bandages and his life changed forever, Jordan has a message for the brazen criminals who changed his life forever.

"I hope you understand what you've done to my life and my family's life for a simple piece of apparatus that'll be junk in a couple of years."