LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — At a restaurant while you are trying to decide what to eat for dinner. On a desk at a children's play room. And at a store while an employee is at work.
These are all places where cell phone thieves have struck around Las Vegas. And now in a neighborhood near Jones Boulevard and Smoke Ranch Road where Jace Sarno was walking to school on Monday morning.
"What kind of a grown man hits a child over a phone?"
Jace said a young man in an old beat up white car pulled up alongside him, jumped out of the vehicle and told him to hand over his phone.
"Then when I said, 'No' he punched me in the face!"
Jace said it came out of nowhere and he blacked out for a few seconds.
"My glasses fell off," he said. "And my glasses hit my eye and this happened."
Jace's father, Tone, said normally Jace walks to school with a group of kids but wanted to get school early after the Thanksgiving holiday. Monday morning he started walking to school alone.
"It's ridiculous. It's not something that should happen," said Tone Sarno. "I walked two and a half to three miles to school when I was a kid. This is not something we ever worried about."
While smart phone thefts are common, most thieves don't target people like Jace who was just out walking on the street. That's according to a phone theft survey recently conducted by IDG Research and Lookout Mobile Security. Instead most are stolen in restaurants and nightclubs.
Most experts say you should not try and fight someone who goes after your phone. Let them have it. Instead your best bet is just to protect your information. Because that's what a lot of thieves want anyway. If your phone is stolen report it to police immediately.
Make sure its password protected and that your important information is backed up elsewhere.
