A SHOP assistant has been hailed a hero after tracking a woman’s stolen handbag through town and holding on to the suspected thief until the police arrived.

Ryan Bridgen (29) used a piece of software installed on the woman’s mobile phone, which was in the bag along with hundreds of pounds of other belongings, to locate the handbag a few streets away and then set off to get it back.

Within an hour he was back at the 99p Store between Bath Street and Halkett Street, where the bag disappeared from just after 10 am yesterday morning, with the bag and all its contents and the suspected thief was on his way to Police Headquarters.

Both Mr Bridgen, whose father Bob owns the 99p Stores, and the woman whose bag went missing, 64-year-old Elizabeth Wood, are now urging Islanders to consider installing similar tracking software on their phones.