Man arrested after Banksy artwork stolen within an hour of appearing

A man has been arrested after a Banksy was stolen less than an hour after it was put up on a south London road.

Banksy confirmed the artwork – a traffic stop sign covered with three aircraft said to resemble military drones – was. his in a social media post on Friday.

But less than an hour later two men were seen taking down the sign at the intersection of Southampton Way and Commercial Way in Peckham at about 12.30pm.

One of them was spotted standing on top of a Lime Bike in order to access the sign more easily.

A witness at the scene said: ‘I opened Instagram and I saw it was posted four minutes before and I was about to go on my lunch break. There were about two people there when I got there. We were all sort of admiring it and taking pictures.

Alex, 26, added: ‘This guy comes up and grabs it, we watched in awe as he bashed it. He put the Lime bike under the sign, stood on the Lime bike and tried to hit the sign, he hit it with his hands and it wasn’t going anywhere.

‘He fell off the Lime bike at one point. He disappeared and went away and about two minutes later he reappeared with bolt cutters and just sort of tried and tried and tried while everyone was watching.’

Another witness, who declined to be named, told Metro they watched the thief disappear after failing to prise the sign off with their hands before returning shortly afterwards with boltcutters.

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‘He must’ve lived locally, because he was only gone a few minutes.’ they said.

‘A few of us were just stood around watching while he did it. Some people tried shouting at him to stop but he didn’t pay us any attention.

‘There was even a man from Southwark Council sat there in a van but he didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was just there to observe. He even took a few pictures of it himself’.

This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.

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