These thugs turned my suburb into a scary place for women like me

It’s 7pm and I’m walking home in the dark after a long day at work. Having navigated the crowded and stifling commute from London, my neighbourhood in Surrey feels safe and welcoming, my haven away from the city.

I’m wearing gloves because the evening has grown cold and fumble to find my keys in my handbag while gripping my phone in the other hand. But as I turn into my driveway, I hear a mountain bike whizzing up behind me.

I don’t react, but listen attentively, heart sinking as I hear it speed closer and closer. I’m 5ft 2in and, though I go to the gym most days, I still feel vulnerable as a small woman in my 50s.

I make for the door. But before I can reach it, someone seizes my arm. My phone is snatched fiercely.

A young man is riding the bike and though he is wearing a black mask and black hoodie, I see a sneer in his eyes as he turns away, the prize of my phone in his hand.

I stand on my doorstep in complete shock. And then I begin to shake. Pictures of my children are on that mobile, as well as contacts, memories and my bank details.

But that’s only part of the point. It’s not just my phone that is stolen from me that night, but my sense of security and my trust in the safety of my neighbourhood. For suddenly, a brand-new threat has cast a dark shadow over my previously quiet little suburb.

I’d seen them before in footage posted online from grittier central London locations – but the arrival here of gangs of teenagers dressed head-to-toe in black, with covered faces, on bikes almost as powerful as motorcycles, has made me scared to even leave my house.

Footage shows a woman having her phone snatched by a thief on an e-bike in London

Leafy, pretty, and only 35 minutes from Victoria Station, St Margarets in Twickenham seemed like the perfect place to raise my kids when I moved here 11 years ago. It’s commutable from London, where I work in customer services and it felt middle-class, safe and neighbourly.

Our house, a four-bedroomed semi situated on a quiet road a stone’s throw from the local park, was the home I’d always dreamt of.

But in the last five years, I have anxiously watched the area decline.

Part of it comes from the demise of the sweet little cafes and restaurants that used to make it feel like such a wholesome community. But the real problem, it seems to me, is the boys in balaclavas.

Whether through violent online games or social media reels that glorify gangs, that black mask hiding all but the eyes has become ‘fashionable’ and ubiquitous, even here.

Not all are thieves, but the point is always to intimidate, to hide their identity. Sometimes they swerve at you deliberately on the pavement. And sometimes, yes, they pick the most vulnerable – often women or other teens – drive at them, then steal from them. Handbags, phones, schoolbags.

These boys display nothing but contempt, perhaps even misogyny, towards people on the streets who are necessarily ‘weaker’ than them. Anyone, it seems, is fair game.

They shoplift, too. Last summer, gangs of youths on e-bikes terrorised all of the nearby towns. As the weather warms up, I fear their return en masse over this summer.

Not that they have ever really left. Day or night, you see them whizzing down the roads, though you have to strain to hear them. That electric hum is almost silent, even on the most powerful bikes, which makes it easier for them to appear – seemingly out of nowhere.

Indeed one incident from last summer should have been a big red warning sign.

I was riding the bus to Richmond, usually a relatively quiet journey travelling through Kew Gardens into the leafy south-west of London. At Richmond Station, a group of elderly women were trying to get off the bus.

But as they did so, they were encircled by a group of boys, all aged about 16 to 18. Dressed entirely in black with the requisite balaclavas, they were pushing into the women, who must have been utterly terrified. The boys thought it was hilarious. It was beyond cruel.

Criminals know no one will stand up to them – it’s this everyday lawlessness that horrifies me

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley speaking outside New Scotland Yard in London last year

The bus was idling at the station, doors still open, and I was sitting at the back. I took my phone out to try and film what was happening so I could report it to the police – but one of the group caught my eye, stopped what he was doing and stared menacingly at me.

I put my phone away and ran down to the bus driver, but he told me there was nothing he could do, so I got off and made a show of calling my husband for help. 

After a couple of minutes they cycled off, leaving the women frightened and upset. My husband came and met me at the bus stop and I’m now wary of taking that route ever again.

That summer, and beyond, people were attacked by teenagers on e-bikes in Putney, Wimbledon and other corners of south-west London and Surrey.

Those bikes cost upwards of £1,000 by the way. Who is buying them for them?

I have a daughter and a son, aged 17 and 16, and, like any mother, I want the best for their future. But I worry about them growing up in this environment. They’re scared and feel uneasy about doing all the things they used to do. 

They’ve stopped going to their extra-curricular classes after school, not wanting to go out alone once it gets dark. They take Spanish lessons on the other side of town, but after my phone was stolen, my daughter said she feels scared crossing the green to get there, and now either my husband or I will meet her at the bus stop to make sure she’s safe.

Now that carrying a knife has become all but normalised among young men, we’re too scared to confront them. They know no one will stand up to them, and it’s this everyday lawlessness that horrifies me.

On the night my phone was taken, I reported it at my local police station in Twickenham. I suppose I felt reassured that the station existed relatively close by.

But earlier this year, it closed – leaving us without a physical police station for miles. I can’t help but feel it’s women, children and the elderly who will suffer for that lack of truly local protection.

A few years ago I’d think nothing of crossing the town at 4am coming home from a party. Now, as I do the short five-minute walk between my home and the station for my commute, I feel horribly vulnerable. Until I double-lock the door behind me, I’m nervous about another attack.

Whenever I go into a shop now I make sure my handbag is to the wall, and I never take my phone out in public. I’m always on edge, never letting my guard down.

This is not how I ever imagined living – not here, or anywhere for that matter.

Not long ago, I heard about a colleague’s father-in-law, in his 70s, being hospitalised after being run over by an e-bike driving at full speed on the pavement.

It’s not hyperbole to say that at the moment, it feels simply unsafe to be a middle-aged woman, an elderly person or a normal teenager in some of the areas of Britain we used to think were havens of peace and security.

On the contrary, we are the targets of a new kind of crime, a new kind of public contempt.

As told to Eleanor Mann. Kate Store is a pseudonym.