CLEVELAND (AP) — A wheelchair stolen from a 9-year-old special needs boy in Cleveland has been quietly returned to a police station, the child’s mother said.
“It’s a happy ending,” Stephen Gibson‘s mother, Barbara, told the Northeast Ohio Media Group (http://bit.ly/189N3ZT ). “He got his wheelchair back.”
Stephen’s special green chair with wheels that light up was swiped from the back of the family’s minivan in Cleveland last weekend. It apparently had been used by thieves to cart away $200 worth of food stolen from a refrigerator and freezer in their garage.
It turned up at a district police station Thursday night.
Barbara Gibson said the chair is “a little rickety” and needs some repairs, but they are thrilled to have it back. Stephen uses it because he has cerebral palsy and scoliosis.
“Whoever had it must have figured it was a hot commodity and they needed to return it,” she said.
The theft had garnered multiple offers of help from around the country. Companies had offered to provide Stephen with a new wheelchair for free, and former American Chopper paint artist Robert “Nub” Collard offered to customize one.
Funds raised for the Gibsons will go toward extensive home remodeling when Stephen’s scoliosis will require a motorized wheelchair in the coming months.
