Land Rover Stolen with Keys Inside and Engine Running on New Year's Day — Recovered in Minutes
- March 28, 2012
- recovery stories
On New Year’s Day 2012, the owner of a 2003 Land Rover Discovery left his vehicle parked, with the engine running, and returned a short while later to find it stolen. Using his cell phone, the owner immediately dialed 911 to report the theft to the Meriden Police Department.
Meriden Police gathered all of the pertinent information, prepared a stolen vehicle report and had the Land Rover’s information entered into the state and federal crime databases. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed inside the Land Rover. Neither the owner nor law enforcement agents had to take any further action to activate the LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery Network, as LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.
Only eight minutes later, officers from the Meriden Police Department began to pick up the silent homing signal from the Land Rover’s LoJack transponder on their patrol vehicle’s Police Tracking Computers (PTC). Following the directional and signal strength cues on their PTC, one patrol vehicle isolated the signal and radioed all Meriden patrols with the location and a description of the stolen Land Rover. Numerous patrol vehicles converged upon the area, and the stolen vehicle was located, parked and unoccupied, in Hartford. Meriden Police recovered the stolen vehicle and returned it to the grateful owner, just 34 minutes after the theft was reported.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the vehicle at Land Rover of Peabody, Peabody, MA