
A takeaway delivery man revealed Tuesday that he is the mysterious
crime-fighter whose image went viral online after he walked into a
British police station dressed as Batman and handed over a wanted
man
Stan Worby, 39, said he was "gobsmacked" by worldwide coverage of
his antics and revealed that the man he turned into police was a
friend.
Worby sparked a wave of theories about his identity on Monday when
police released a CCTV image of a man dressed as the comic book
hero, delivering the suspect to a police station in Bradford,
northern England.
He had told dumbstruck officers: "I've caught this one for you!"
before vanishing into the night on the early hours of February
25.
Danny Frayne, 27, has been charged with handling stolen goods and
fraud-related offences and will appear in court on Friday.
Worby, who works for a Chinese takeaway, said his friend had wanted
to hand himself in.
"Obviously it was done as a joke," Worby told ITV television.
Worby said he took offence at media reports describing him as a
chubby version of the "caped crusader" -- protesting that he looks
overweight in the picture because he was wearing a tracksuit under
the costume to stay warm.
"I've got my full tracksuit underneath," he explained. "I'm not
just wearing this -- it's too thin."
Worby said he had been at a football match in London on February 24
-- wearing the Batman outfit -- when Frayne called to ask if he
could give him a lift to the police station.
"I told him as soon as I was home I would run him to Bradford
central police station," Worby told the Daily Telegraph
newspaper.
"Danny's a good friend of mine and I've known him for 15 years or
so. Who knows if I'll be doing some more crime-fighting in the
future?"
Neighbourhood police in the Buttershaw area of Bradford revealed
details of the mystery on their Facebook page and the incident was
captured on CCTV.
Worby is not the first man to pose as a real-life Batman.
In October, a man pleaded not guilty to obstructing US police while
dressed as Batman, after he refused to leave them alone while they
searched for a driver who had fled the scene of an accident.
Mark Wayne Williams had already been sentenced to six months'
probation after police received a report of a man dressed as Batman
on the roof of a business in Michigan.