Video: Nick Martin explains the moment he caught a wanted robber (Credit: Notts Police)
A Chilwell man has explained the moment he caught a wanted robber who attacked and stole from vulnerable people.
Claudiu Rosu, 24, of no fixed address pleaded guilty to two robberies, as assault causing actual bodily harm and a theft at a previous hearing at Nottingham Crown Court on October 21.
The Romanian national was told on Wednesday (November 15) he will be deported after serving his jail sentence of four years.
Rosu was arrested on September 11 after member of the public Nick Martin, 34, of Chilwell, detained him in Beeston town centre until officers arrived after recognising him from CCTV released by Nottinghamshire Police.
Mr Martin said: “He just fell into my hands – I went running over and grabbed him from behind and apprehended him.
“I felt very relieved – I’ve got a nan who lives a couple of streets away from where the first incident happened.
“It was a good feeling to know I had got him and I think any decent person would do the same.”
Mr Martin said he heard the screams of the first victim two days earlier while in his sitting room and went out to see if he could help.
In that incident, Rosu had followed an 82-year-old woman and attacked her from behind on Hall Drive at around 8.45pm on September 9.
She lost a tooth in the assault and Rosu ran off after she screamed.
Mr Martin said he came across the attacker at the tram stop on Bramcote Lane but did not know he was the culprit at that point.
Rosu also robbed a 35-year-old woman in Caldbeck Court at around 9.15pm that night.
He followed her before grabbing her from behind and bundling her to the floor – she had a chain ripped from her neck and her handbag stolen.
At 11.45pm, Rosu snatched an iPhone from a 17-year-old boy’s hand on a footpath next to Eskdale Drive.
On the following day at around 3.50pm, he robbed a female student, grabbing her from behind on Cut Through Lane, University Park Campus, with his hand over her nose and mouth, and taking her Samsung mobile phone.
She was so frightened she dropped her belongings and fled and saw Rosu picking them up.
Mr Martin said he recognised Rosu as the man he had seen at the tram stop when he saw Nottinghamshire Police’s appeal for information including a CCTV image and from then on was keeping an eye out in case he came across him again.
And while he was on Beeston High Road on September 11 he spotted him coming out of an amusement arcade.
He grabbed him outside the Natwest bank while his mother called the police and officers arrived to arrest him.
DC Louise Bradford, the officer in the case, said: “The crimes that Rosu committed left these vulnerable people absolutely terrified and apprehensive about walking around alone.
“Without the assistance from a very brave member of the public Rosu may have continued to target others and we would like to thank him for that, although we would never suggest that anyone should put themselves in harm’s way.”
