Wave of Car Thefts at Convenience Stores
5 Jan 2015Multiple vehicles have been stolen at local Mobile, Alabama gas stations in recent months. And we’re not talking about low numbers. The police department says that more than 800 vehicles were stolen just in 2015. Sadly, only 300 of those had been recovered.
In one incident recently, Rick Dillon had pulled into the parking lot of a Circle K at the corner of Knollwood and Grelot road. It was on a Thursday morning at approximately 10:30, says Dillon. He had left his keys in his vehicle and went inside the store. His car was gone when he came back out. Since then, he has received some great news.
They found his car in Harrison County, which is around an hour away in Mississippi, Dillon said. He adds, he received some bad news as well. His car had been wrecked both in the front and back.
Over the past few months, there have been several cars stolen from convenience stores, Mobile Police Department’s Officer Terence Perkins said. The issue is the owners left their cars running, he added.
They believe that Keonte Evans who has stolen a car each month starting in September had something to do with it. The problem is they don’t know where the cars end up.
Perkins says that they had a lot of vehicles taken from Mobile and they have ended up in scrap yards in Mississippi. This state is an easier place to scrap. They have different laws over there than they do in Mobile. There have been several cars stolen recently and used in the commission of a crime, Perkins says.
The police department in Mobile has seen around 860 vehicles stolen this past year and they have only been able to recover 300 of them. You can increase the odds of you getting your car back by installing a GPS tracking device in your car. These GPS trackers are already installed in some smaller car dealerships’ cars.
When dealers put GPS tracking devices in their cars, they can not only find the car, they can actually stop it in its tracks and keep it from running. You can imagine how helpful that would be.
Unfortunately, Dillon had a lesson he had to learn. That lesson was to never leave your keys in your car and never leave it running.
So, what are the two ways to keep your car safe? Don’t leave your car running even if you are running into a convenience store real quickly and install a GPS tracking device on your car so you can locate it in the event it does get stolen.
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