LoJack® System Helps NC DMV and the Lancaster County (SC) Sheriff’s Department Recover Stolen Melroe Bobcat Mini Excavator Model 324
- January 20, 2016
- recovery stories
The owners, a national equipment rental company, of a 2011Melroe Bobcat mini excavator contacted the Huntersville Police Department to report that their vehicle was stolen from a secure fenced storage area. The mini excavator was secure in the fenced area on the previous Friday at the close of the business. The following Tuesday, employees discovered the gate lock had been cut and an inventory showed the mini excavator missing.
The Huntersville PD verified the theft and entered the vehicle information into the state and federal crime computers which automatically activated the LoJack® System concealed in the Bobcat.
The next morning a North Carolina DMV License & Theft Inspector starting his commute to his Monroe, NC, office picked up the silent LoJack signal from the stolen Bobcat with the LoJack Police Tracking Computers (PTC) that are installed in patrol vehicles and aircraft. Following the directional and audible cues from the PTC, the Inspector followed the LoJack signal until he reached the North Carolina/South Carolina state line on the Henry Nesbit Road. Realizing the stolen Bobcat was in the jurisdiction of the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department, South Carolina, information was given and sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a construction site off Belt Lane, approximately a half mile inside South Carolina. There deputies found the Bobcat hidden behind a steel container and beside a New Holland skid steer. Also found were two trailers, one having twin wave runners with water craft registrations indicating registered in Maryland, and a 28 foot tandem axle flat trailer.
Information was developed from the person in possession of the Bobcat indicating he had spoken to a known person about buying a mini excavator. The time line shows this known person delivered to the possessor the Bobcat on the Saturday after the equipment was last known to be secure. The selling person required only cash payment. The possessor had been told not to start the equipment at the time of delivery; this is done in an effort to defeat any tracking device, thus not drawing the attention of police.
An investigation continues by law enforcement in Huntersville, NC, and Lancaster County to follow up the identification of all the other equipment and the selling suspect. Criminal charges are expected in this investigation. The rental company traveled 50 miles to the recovery site to take possession of the Melroe Bobcat.
The LoJack® System was installed in the Melroe Bobcat in May 2011 at the rental company’s Charlotte, North Carolina, location.