Contractor's Stolen Econoline Van Quickly Recovered by FL Police, Loaded with Tools
- June 15, 2012
- recovery stories
On the morning of April 20, 2012, the owner of a 2007 Ford Econoline van discovered the vehicle missing from the parking lot of his apartment complex where he had parked the previous night. He immediately contacted the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office to report the theft. After preparing a theft report, the officers had the Ford’s information entered into the state and federal police crime computer systems. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the vehicle. Neither the owner nor law enforcement agents had to do anything else to activate the LoJack Vehicle Recovery Network, as LoJacks’ interface with law enforcement is both seamless and instantaneous.
Approximately 30 minutes after later, a detective with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s TRAP unit picked up the Ford’s silent LoJack homing signal on the LoJack Police Tracking Computer (PTC) installed in his department car. Using the directional and signal strength indicators on his PTC, he quickly located the van in the backyard of an abandoned private residence in Apopka, Florida. The van was loaded with numerous tools, as the owner is a contractor. It could not be determined at the time of recovery whether anything was missing or not.
The vehicle was recovered with ignition damage only and towed to a storage facility.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in this vehicle at the original owner’s request in June 2008.