Stolen John Deere Backhoe Recovered, Abandoned in a Field
- April 21, 2012
- recovery stories
When a construction crew in Houston arrived for work early on the morning of March 14, 2012, they discovered their rented John Deere Backhoe missing and immediately filed a theft report with the Houston Police Department. After all the pertinent information was gathered, Houston Police entered the backhoe’s information into the state and national stolen vehicle computer system. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the equipment. Neither the owners nor law enforcement had to do anything else to activate the LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery Network because LoJack’s interface with law enforcement is both seamless and instantaneous.
A few days later, deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department began to receive the silent LoJack homing signal from the stolen equipment on the LoJack Police Tracking Computers (PTC) installed in their patrol cars. The deputies then queried the Reply Code appearing on the PTC display screen against the police computer system and were given a complete description of the stolen backhoe that they were tracking. Following the directional cues on the PTC, the deputies tracked and located the backhoe, abandoned in a field in Harris County. The backhoe was recovered and stored by police until the owners could be notified of the recovery.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the backhoe at the original owner’s request in September 2011.