“Armed and Dangerous” Auto Thief Arrested by Denver Police After High-Speed Drive
- April 29, 2012
- recovery stories
On March 31, 2012, the owner of a 2002 Subaru Impreza contacted the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office to report the vehicle stolen.
The responding officer completed a vehicle theft report and had all of the Subaru’s information entered into the state and federal police computer systems. This routine action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the vehicle. Neither the owners nor law enforcement agents had to take any further action to activate the LoJack Vehicle Recovery Network, because LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.
During the next few hours, officers in several metro-Denver jurisdictions received the Subaru’s silent homing signal on the LoJack Police Tracking Computers (PTC) installed in their patrol cars. The officers then queried the LoJack “Reply Code” appearing on the PTC display screens with the police stolen vehicle computer system and received a full description of the Subaru Impreza they were tracking. Following the directional and signal strength information provided by the PTC, the officers determined that the vehicle was traveling rapidly through Arapahoe, Denver, Jefferson and Adams Counties. Numerous officers sighted the vehicle, but to avoid a dangerous high-speed pursuit, the police elected to monitor the vehicle’s activity and location.
Before long, the suspect abandoned the Subaru and fled on foot. Denver officers surrounded the area, and successfully located the armed suspect, hiding in the backyard of a Denver residence. The suspect was arrested without injury to police or members of the public. Investigation revealed that the suspect was wanted on numerous outstanding warrants, describing him as “armed and dangerous.”
The Subaru was recovered undamaged and will be returned to the owner, who was unaware that the previous owner of his vehicle had installed a LoJack Vehicle Recovery System. In this case, LoJack enabled the police to recover the vehicle undamaged, and arrest a very dangerous suspect in a safe manner for all.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in the Subaru Impreza at Burt Subaru in Englewood, Colorado, on July 2002.