Two Freightliner Tractors Stolen from Storage Yard Recovered Simultaneously, Minutes After Theft Report
- March 20, 2012
- recovery stories
On Tuesday morning, January 3, 2012, the owner of a trucking company arrived at his storage yard and discovered that sometime during the previous night, someone had cut the lock on the chain of the yard’s gate and stolen two tractors. One was a 2003 Blue Freightliner tractor and the other a 2005 Blue Freightliner tractor. The owner contacted the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to report the vehicles stolen.
Upon arrival at the scene, the responding officer met with the owner and gathered all the information about the burglary and theft of the trucks. The officer prepared a stolen vehicle report and had the tractors’ information entered into the federal-state crime computers. This routine police procedure automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the Freightliner trucks.
Minutes later, a Miami-Dade Police Department officer received the silent LoJack signal from the stolen 2003 Freightliner tractor’s LoJack unit, and began tracking the stolen equipment by following the directional and signal strength cues on their patrol car’s LoJack Police Tracking Computer. Shortly thereafter, the Miami officer, along with backup, located the 2003 Freightliner tractor near N.W. 138th Street and 59th Avenue. The truck’s six new tires had been replaced with four badly-worn tires.
At the same time, a North Miami detective had begun tracking the stolen 2005 Freightliner tractor’s LoJack signal, and quickly located the truck near N.W. 164th Street and 6th Avenue, in good condition. The investigation into the tractor was turned over to the Miami-Dade Police Department, as it was their jurisdiction.
Both vehicles were recovered, towed to the police impound yard for safekeeping, and removed from federal-state crime computer systems.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the 2003 Blue Freightliner tractor on November 28, 2006 and in the 2005 Blue Freightliner tractor on November 17, 2006, and has been protecting both of them ever since.