Police Canvass Los Feliz for Cello

Police were questioning residents in a Los Feliz neighborhood where a young man on a bicycle pedaled away from a musician’s home with a stolen $3.5-million Stradivarius cello tucked under his arm.

The Los Angeles Police Department this week released a videotape that shows the bicyclist grasping the silver cello case with one arm and steering with the other, crashing into trash cans before getting away. The sequence was recorded by a home security camera across the street.

The cello -- owned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and played by the orchestra’s principal cellist, Peter Stumpf, 41 -- was taken about 6:30 a.m. on April 25 after Stumpf accidentally left it on his front steps overnight.

Detectives have been going door to door on Talmadge Street questioning residents, and Det. Don Hrycyk said he plans to distribute fliers and videotapes of the theft to nearby schools, including John Marshall High School.

“I’ll probably be getting ahold of the people that run the music department,” Hrycyk said. “Their students will probably be the ones most concerned about this and will be out there beating the bushes.”

At the high school, automotive mechanics teacher Tom Marshall told his students to keep an eye out for the cello.

“I told the kids, ‘If you see a big fiddle running around, don’t smash it and be like Axl Rose because these things are worth money,’ ” Marshall said.

On Thursday, a $50,000 reward was offered for the cello’s safe return through the LAPD by a donor who wants to remain anonymous.