Sterling Tank Truck Stolen from Construction Site, Quickly Recovered by Highlands County Police
- August 16, 2012
- recovery stories
According to sources, on Monday morning, July 2, 2012, a Highlands County Sheriff’s Office deputy discovered the chain link fence gate of a construction company open. Further investigation revealed that the chain lock had been compromised and the office burglarized. During the burglary, the keys to a 1999 White Sterling tank truck had been stolen, enabling the thieves to remove the vehicle from the premises. The deputy contacted the owner of property who responded to the scene.
Highlands County deputies verified the theft and had the truck’s information entered into the state and federal crime computers, which automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the equipment.
Later that day, members of the Auto Theft Task Force, searching for the vehicle along the Florida Turnpike, picked up the Sterling truck’s silent LoJack homing signal on their on-board LoJack Police Tracking computer (PTC). Following the directional and audible cues on their PTCs, the task force members followed the signal on the west side of the turnpike and north of Okeechobee Road onto N.W. 122nd Avenue. The signal led the ATTF members to the eastern end of N.W. 160th Street, where they located the stolen truck. As one of the members of the ATTF team was a Hialeah Police Department detective, he recovered the vehicle, had it towed to the police impound yard for safekeeping, and removed it from the federal and state crime computer systems.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the tank truck on August 12, 1999, and has been protecting it ever since.