Acura Integra Stolen & Recovered with LoJack for 3rd Time, CA Police Arrest Suspect
- May 4, 2012
- recovery stories
On April 12, 2012, a San Gabriel Police Department officer was in the process of gathering information from a traffic violator when his onboard LoJack system alerted him to a stolen vehicle in his area. According to the officer, he first thought that it might be a training signal, but after checking the LoJack computer screen, he verified that he was tracking a stolen vehicle.
The officer issued a verbal warning to the traffic violator, climbed back into his police vehicle and called the LoJack reply code into his dispatcher. The dispatcher advised the officer that he was tracking a 1998 Acura Integra, reported stolen minutes earlier to the West Covina Police Department. At first, the officer noted that the vehicle appeared to be traveling westbound, but when he turned his vehicle in a westerly direction, the signal was now traveling eastbound. The officer determined that the vehicle had just driven past him, sped through traffic, and observed the stolen Acura turning into a service station in an attempt to evade the police. The officer pulled into the station, blocking the vehicle, and held the suspect at gunpoint until a back-up unit arrived. Once the assisting officer arrived, the suspect was taken into custody without further incident.
The officers noted that the suspect had jammed a single key into the ignition. The suspect was taken to the City Jail and booked for Driving Without Owners Consent. The Acura was stored and later released to the victim. This was the third time that this vehicle had been stolen, tracked and recovered with assistance from LoJack since 2000.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in this Acura Integra at the original owner’s request at Santa Monica Acura in December 1997.