Bizarre home security footage has captured the moment a “clearly” intoxicated man stumbles up to a Melbourne home to deliver UberEats before stealing several items, falling down the steps and running away.
Alex Sheather, 35, said he had ordered a butter chicken and naan bread from a local Indian takeaway earlier this month when the “absolutely mental” incident unfolded.
The electrician, from Scoresby in Melbourne’s east, was sitting in his lounge room waiting for his food when “I could hear this bang as he walked up the driveway”, followed by some “fumbling at the front door”.
“When I opened the door it was dead obvious he was clearly off his face,” he told news.com.au. “You could tell he was just wasted.”
Mr Sheather said it wasn’t until the next day that he discovered the cover of his Ring doorbell had been torn off.
When he checked his cameras, he realised the man had also stolen a tool from the front of his house as he left.
The footage shows the man making his way up the driveway holding the plastic bag, tripping and nearly falling over as he nears the front steps.
He is seen struggling to stand upright as he rings the doorbell.
The man hands the food over and slurs “cheers”, then starts to make his way back down the steps as the door closes.
But as he reaches the bottom he suddenly turns around and lunges for the doorbell, pulling off the cover.
He turns and tries to run back but falls forward onto a bench seat, where his hand lands on a silicone gun that Mr Sheather had been using on his van.
The man stands up holding the gun and runs back to the waiting car, jumping in the passenger seat. Mr Sheather said he had handed the footage to police but added, “Uber has barely responded to me.”
“I called the police earlier this week and they can’t get a response from Uber,” he said.
“Every conversation I’ve had with Uber has mostly been robot replies, but even the human replies are basically saying there’s nothing they can do. They refuse to give me the driver’s details so I can at least contact him and attempt to get my items back.”
Uber said it was “investigating this incident”.
“What’s been described has no place on the Uber platform,” a spokeswoman told news.com.au.
“Uber’s Community Guidelines state that if you are a delivery person, you must complete all parts of the delivery yourself — including any handling after an order is picked up from a merchant up until final delivery to the Uber Eats user — with no exception. Breaching Uber’s Community Guidelines can lead to permanent loss of access to the Uber app.”
frank.chung@news.com.au