Wheelchair theft sparks outrage, generosity

By Larry Hartstein

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Atlantans learned a 24-year-old with spina bifida had his customized wheelchair stolen, the reaction was swift.

"It hasn't turned into, ‘Oh, this poor pitiful handicapped child.' It's turned into, ‘Who would steal a wheelchair? You can't do that,'" Franklin Smith told the AJC on Monday.

His son, Matthew, watched from the window of his Beechwood Drive home last Wednesday as someone in a red pickup truck stopped, loaded up the wheelchair and drove off.

After ajc.com reported on the theft, strangers and friends offered replacements.

"My friend posted it on Facebook and I was just sick of people in Atlanta not caring about each other," said bartender Sam Jones, 29, who  offered a wheelchair. "Dude got his wheelchair stolen -- what cannot grab you about that?"

The family received at least three other offers, too.

"It is so nice of people to offer, but I think we're in pretty good shape now," Franklin Smith said.

His wife's teaching colleague at The Westminster Schools loaned Matthew a wheelchair immediately.

"And the Shepherd Center has a group of used chairs, and it's likely they'll have one that will fit Matthew and be lighter weight," Franklin Smith said. "In the meantime, he needs one custom made. Insurance should cover it."

With all the recent rain, the Smiths had kept the wheelchair near the end of their steep driveway. They covered it with a black bag to keep it dry. It was about 15 feet from the road.

Before Matthew Smith could catch his bus Wednesday for his weekly trip to the Shepherd Center, he saw the pickup truck driver take his wheelchair.

He said it felt like someone was “taking a piece of him.”

The non-collapsible chair is about 30 inches tall, two-and-a-half feet wide and aluminum-framed with red piping, a black cushion seat and raised red lettering on the back that spelled Smith.

“It pretty much helped create a social life for me,” he said, speaking of the manual Action wheelchair.

And it helped him compete.

Smith has been a member of the Shepherd Center’s air rifle team since 2004. He became interested while in ROTC in high school. When he started going to the Shepherd Center, he found out they had a team and decided to join.

In 2007, Smith took third place in a national competition.

His next match is scheduled for Dec. 3 in Colorado Springs.

Without his chair, Smith believes he will do poorly. The chair is a part of his equipment. It helps him shoot.

“It is extremely hard to compete without the chair,” he said.

Still, he plans to attend.

The Smiths filed a police report about the stolen wheelchair, but so far there are no suspects.

--Staff writers Mashaun D. Simon and Alexis Stevens contributed to this article.