Carlton coach Michael Voss says he may have been a bit “silly” chasing down two alleged car thieves before making a citizen’s arrest on Tuesday morning.
He said there was a “shock moment” when police pulled a knife from the teen he’d tackled to the ground as he tried to scale a fence.
Voss was getting one of two morning coffees at his local cafe in Hawthorn when a Mercedes lost control and flipped onto its side nearby. Two teenagers got out of the car and ran off.
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It was then Voss decided to chase them and he caught a 16-year-old, holding him down until police arrived.
Voss, along with and Barton Milk Bar owner James Laskie, jumped over bins and scaled a fence to catch the teen and was told he “never had to pay for a coffee” at the venue again.
“I knew the situation had changed dramatically when two youths got out of the car. I knew it wasn’t their car,” Voss told SEN said on Friday morning.
“I could make that assessment pretty quickly. I thought I would do the right thing and take a couple of pics and get the video and then as they were running away, they were about 100m down the road, I thought ‘bugger it, I’m going to get one’, so I went in pursuit.
“They thought they were pretty comfortable. There was a point halfway up the hill I thought ‘what am I actually doing here?’ I was running out of gas and wasn’t even close to them.
“I thought I might as well see it out and that’s when the pursuit began. I definitely didn’t have them for speed. It certainly escalated pretty quickly.
“To see at the end that he was holding a knife, that was a shock moment.”
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Voss said it was the second time he had been out walking the streets of Hawthorn, the first being during the second half of Sunday night’s clash between Fremantle and Port Adelaide, with Carlton relying on a Port win to make the finals.
“It was an unusual 48 hours and will occupy a page in my book somewhere down the line,” he said.
“It started with me pacing the streets around Hawthorn from about half-time in the Fremantle- Port Adelaide game to Tuesday morning sprinting up some of those hills.
“It was an unusual set of circumstances, looking back on a little bit silly to be honest, but as long as no one got hurt.”
When police arrived to arrest the teenager Voss had tackled, they allegedly found him with a large knife. He was charged but released on bail.
Carlton plays the Brisbane Lions in an elimination final at the Gabba next Saturday.
Source Agencies
