Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Use LoJack to Recover 3 Stolen Hondas, Arrest One Suspect
- November 9, 2012
- recovery stories
On September 26, 2012, the owner of a Honda Civic contacted the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to report that their vehicle was stolen from an apartment complex parking lot in Charlotte. The owner had parked the Honda in the lot around 10:30 PM the previous night, and when he returned to drive it to work at 7:45AM, he discovered the vehicle missing.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police verified the theft and entered the Honda’s information into the state and federal crime computers, which automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the vehicle.
Within minutes, officers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department picked up the silent LoJack homing signals from the stolen Honda on the Police Tracking Computers installed in their patrol vehicles. Following the directional and audible cues from the LoJack computers, the officers tracked the vehicle to a residential neighborhood on Langley Road. There, officers located the stolen Honda in the back yard of a home, along with two other Honda Civics that had been reported stolen in Charlotte the night before. Officers made several attempts to contact the person(s) inside the home; finally, a male came to the door, but refused to allow officers to search the property and interior of the house. The officers obtained a search warrant for the residence, and during the ensuing search, recovered two stolen car radios and a Honda “master key”. One of the persons in the home confessed to stealing all three Honda Civics and was arrested on three counts of felony larceny of a motor vehicle.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the listed Honda Civic in January of 1999 at Brickell Pontiac in Miami, Florida.