LoJack Helps McDowell County Deputies Recover Stolen Ford F150 Pickup Truck
- December 3, 2012
- recovery stories
On November 23, 2012, the owner of a Ford F-150 4×4 pickup truck contacted the McDowell County Sheriff’s Office to report that their vehicle was stolen from a gated residential community on Lake James out of Nebo, NC. The owner, a resident of Dallas, Texas, had last been at the vacation home during the Labor Day weekend. The Ford truck was on the property at that time, but the truck’s battery was dead. Returning to Lake James for the Thanksgiving holiday, the owner discovered the truck missing, as well as a battery that had been removed from his boat and other personal property taken from a storage building.
McDowell County Sheriff Office verified the theft and entered the vehicle information into the state and federal crime computers, which automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the Ford pickup truck.
A short while later, deputies from the McDowell County Sheriff Office picked up the silent LoJack homing signals from the stolen Ford F-150 on the LoJack Police Tracking Computer installed in their patrol vehicle. Following the directional and audible cues from the LoJack computer, the deputies tracked the vehicle to a wooded area off Roland Chapel Road, approximately two miles from the theft location. The track signal led deputies off road, up a steep dirt mountain trail, to the top of the ridge, where they located the abandoned pickup. A key was found in the ignition and the pickup was undamaged. None of the other stolen personal property was recovered. While they were processing the pickup for latent officers, deputies were informed by a neighboring property owner that a male suspect with a history of larceny and vehicle theft was seen running through the woods away from the recovery site. The theft investigation continues.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the Ford F-150 in November of 1997 at Island Ford Inc. in Staten Island, New York.