Internet Tracks Down Man Who Ran Out of Salon Without Paying Hair Stylist for Braids

A man who cut and ran after getting his braids done up by a hairstylist is going viral on TikTok for all the wrong reasons. Big Hair Crush (@bighaircrush) posted a video of the incident in the hopes that the internet would "do its thing" and help find the man for effectively stealing services from a beauty worker who dedicated their time to crafting his braids.

And it seems like other users on the app did indeed, do their thing: BHC's video accrued a whopping 29.8 million views on the application and they may have very well turned the young thief into the laughing stock of TikTok as a result of his crime.

"SERVICE THEFT" a text overlay in the video reads, which shows a man seated in a barber's chair. He has dreads on his head — the woman fashioned his hair into the style removes the cape from around his neck and begins to dust it off.

The man, who is wearing matching green sweatpants and a t-shirt, stands up to grab his coat. He is peering into his phone as the employee hangs the cape up on a wall hook. A surveillance camera inside of the room records the two in the space as they stand in silence — the woman tidying up her place of business and the man scrolling through his smartphone's touchscreen.

It looks like the man is scrolling through a text message conversation just to bide his time until the hair stylist is no longer in the way of the door. Once he sees a clear means of escape, he immediately books it towards the door, running at full speed.

"Excuse me. Hey!" the woman says as she watches the man run away upon getting his dreads done, now, effectively for free. Well, just about.

The TikToker put the customer on blast in the comments section of the video, even providing their name and urging folks to turn him in: "If anyone knows Tyrell Akindolani please contact me! Client had twists with extensions and was 2 hours late to his booking. He paid 1p before running out the salon.

If Tyrell did in fact use his actual name when booking the hair appointment, then this makes him just about the worst criminal in the world: not only was he "caught in 4K" right on camera stealing the service from the stylist, but he gave up his identity in the process.

Numerous folks who carefully scrutinized the video believe that Tyrell was looking through his mobile banking application to determine whether or not he had the funds to cover the cost of the styling job in the first place.

"The fact he opened the Barclays app twice before he ran out," one person joked.

"Bro checked the bank saw he had no bread and cut," another quipped.

Others thought it was pretty lame of the man to hit up a stylist and schedule work to get done despite being broke: "Booking hair appointment w no bread is grievous work"

Someone else said that if they were ever caught doing this on camera and their theft ended up going viral on the the internet that they would probably never emotionally recover: "Government baited, caught on camera, the shame alone would ruin me"

However, there were folks who managed to capture the man online bragging about his new look...completely oblivious to the fact that there are probably throngs of people out there who know he's a thief who can't afford to get his hair braided: "Bro his TikTok account profile pic is him posing with his new braids and extensions"

There does seem to be a TikTok account linked to the man's name, however, the profile picture of the account features a screenshot image of him sitting in the barber's chair after the beautician finished her work, and there isn't any content posted to the account page.

This means that maybe Tyrell temporarily disabled the account or there was someone out there who tried taking advantage of the fact that this video blew up and opened a handle up in his name.

Several other commenters said that Tyrell lied about his name and that it's Tyloulou, which is consistent with another TikTok handle of the same name.

In a video Tyloulou posted to the account, he urged others on the platform to stop using his picture as their profile picture on the popular social media application as some sort of running joke.

Commenters who replied to the post, however, didn't seem too keen on heeding his exhortations. Several replied that they felt sorry for the woman he stole money from, while others said that if he was broke he could've easily just said that and tried to suss out the situation with the employee instead of running away.