San Diego Police Recover Stolen Mercedes, Abandoned & Undamaged, Minutes After Theft Report
- April 22, 2012
- recovery stories
When the owner of a 2001 Mercedes Benz SL600 Roadster discovered that his vehicle had been stolen on March 20, 2012, he reported the theft to the San Diego Sheriff’s Department. It was the Sheriff’s Department’s routine entry of the vehicle’s information into the nationwide law enforcement stolen vehicle computer system that automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the vehicle. Neither the owner nor law enforcement agents had to take any further action to initiate the police tracking of the vehicle, as LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.
Less than 15 minutes later, a San Diego Sheriff’s Department-Lemon Grove ground unit began to pick up the Mercedes’ silent LoJack homing signal on the LoJack Police Tracking Computer installed in his patrol car. Following the directional and signal strength cues on the tracking computer, the officers located the vehicle, abandoned in a parking lot in the 40th block of 4th Avenue in Chula Vista.
The Mercedes Benz SL600 had been installed with the LoJack Vehicle Recovery System by a previous owner twelve years earlier. The current owner was happy that his vehicle had LoJack, and happier still when police called him to retrieve his undamaged vehicle.