Prince Harry’s triple amputee friend has stolen prosthetic legs returned
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
A triple amputee Afghanistan veteran who the Duke of Sussex has hailed as a “real hero” has had his stolen prosthetic legs returned after a social media appeal.
Royal Marine Mark Ormrod, 40, hailed “the power of social media” after a stranger found his stolen belongings abandoned in an alley behind her house and contacted him.
It followed the publication on Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, of video footage showing the theft into his vehicle and his disbelief that someone would steal equipment so indispensable for an amputee.
The post attracted more than a thousand retweets and hundreds of messages of support as well as offers of help from shocked followers.
The father-of-three from Plymouth, who joined Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, at the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf last September, updated his followers on Wednesday night saying that his belongings had been found.
THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA!
So on my way out of London tonight I checked my emails and DM’s and had messages from a woman who said she’d found my stuff just after 8pm last night in an alley by her house and somehow saw my social media post about it!!!
I now have everything back… pic.twitter.com/dNT5LnQ6Pj— Mark Ormrod MBE (@MarkOrmrod) January 10, 2024
He also revealed that Autoglass had managed to fix his broken car rear windshield within 45 minutes, which had been completely smashed during the theft outside of a hotel.
Detailing the incident on his social media on Wednesday, Mr Ormrod said: “The sad thing is to think that someone would break into a car parked in a disabled parking space and steal equipment someone needs to live independently, and not even care.”
In a follow-up post to his X account on Thursday morning, the veteran wrote that the thief responsible for breaking into his car and taking his prosthetic legs must have been “desperate”.
“I’ve been thinking a lot these last 24hrs,” he wrote, adding: “For someone to break into anyone’s car and steal from them is wrong. To break into a disabled persons [sic] car makes me think that the thief was desperate and I’m going to assume (rightly or wrongly) that they’re [sic] life’s in a bad place and they’re down on their luck.”
“Whoever you are that broke into my car I hope that if you are down on your luck that things change,” Mr Ormrod added. “Draw a line in the sand, take personally responsibility [sic] for your life, pull yourself up and take your life to where you want it to be.”
Mr Ormrod lost both his legs and his right arm while serving in Helmand Province on Christmas Eve in 2007. He detonated a Taliban booby-trap that ripped off his limbs and led medics to pronounce him dead twice.
He became the UK’s first triple amputee to survive the war and has since raised a huge amount of money for the Royal Marines Charity.
The Duke of Sussex, who is passionate about helping Britain’s veterans, dubbed him Britain’s own “superman” after the pair met while he was in recovery.
In 2021, when Mr Ormrod announced he was going to have a break from his charity work to spend more time with his family, the Duke wrote him a letter thanking him for his decade of work for the cause.
