LoJack® System Helps Greensboro Police Department Recover Two Stolen Melroe Bobcat Skid Steer Loaders
- October 5, 2015
- recovery stories
The owners of a 2003 Melroe Bobcat Model 773 contacted the Greensboro Police Department to report that their skid steer loader was stolen during the previous night from a street improvement project. The skid steer had been parked on the street right of way at the intersection of Gate City Blvd. and Meadowview Street. No witness or suspect was known at the time of their crime reporting.
The Greensboro PD verified the theft and entered the skid steer loader information into the state and federal crime computers which automatically activated the LoJack® System concealed in the Melroe Bobcat.
A short while later the silent LoJack signal from the stolen Melroe Bobcat alerted on the LoJack Police Tracking Computers (PTC) that are installed in patrol vehicles and aircraft. Following the directional and audible cues from the PTC, officers were guided to a residential/commercial area approximately five miles north of downtown Greensboro. Near the intersection of Southern Webbing Mill Road and Dillon Road, the signal directed officers to a dead end street and a heavily wooded area. There a trampled area was found, which had been made by something other than foot prints leading into the woods. Approximately one hundred feet into the woods was the stolen skid steer and to the side of it was another skid steer loader. The second skid steer was identified to be a 2004 Melroe Bobcat Model S185, stolen three nights before from a residential construction contractor job site in north eastern Greensboro.
Each victim company was called to the recovery site to drive their skid steer out of the woods and load them on their company’s trailer to return to the job sites. There was no apparent physical damage to either skid steer. The Greensboro PD officers involved in the track to recovery stated, “Without one of the loaders being equipped with LoJack, the two pieces of equipment would probably not have been recovered unless a concerned citizen had been in the wooded area, saw the equipment and called the police.”
The LoJack® System was installed in the Melroe Bobcat Model 773 in March 2003 at the construction company’s area office in Greensboro, North Carolina.