Stolen Trailer and Its Contents Recovered Thanks to GPS Tracking

20 Jun 2017

A Broken Arrow man was arrested for stealing $20,225 worth of assets from a Stillwater storage unit which included an enclosed trailer (black box) and property as well as an Oklahoma license plate.

The alleged thief remains free and has a $5,000 bond pending his court appearance with his lawyer on his two-count charge.

Stillwater police located and arrested him south of a Golf course entrance approximately 26 minutes after the police were called by the trailer owner to report it missing and the fact he was using GPS to track it.

The owner’s cell phone alerted him while he was asleep that his GPS tracking device was activated by movement. Since he lived close to the storage facility, he drove there to verify if his trailer was in fact missing. After seeing it was, he used his cell phone’s GPS to track its movement and he contacted the police.

In an affidavit, the police sergeant wrote that he had asked the suspect if the trailer was his and the suspect claimed it was saying he had just retrieved it from a storage facility. The Sgt. then went on to tell the suspect that it had a GPS tracker on it, which is how he found him and asked if he would like to tell his side of the story. The suspect told the Sgt. he would like to remain silent.

Once the trailer owner made it to the scene, he verified the trailer immediately saying it was his and opened the locks on the back gate with his key as well as the truck’s broken lock in the back.

After opening the trailer up, he retrieved the GPS device hidden behind his commercial lawn equipment in the trailer’s front wall near the top.

The owner claimed he didn’t know the suspect and that he didn’t give the suspect permission to take the trailer. The alleged thief was then arrested.

The Sgt. noticed that the back seat and bed of the truck was filled with hand, power and construction tools which he suspected the alleged thief also stole. He had also stolen an Oklahoma license tag from another vehicle that was located in Stillwater at an apartment complex.

The officer who watch the surveillance video from the storage facility said that from what he could see, the suspect jumped over the storage facility’s perimeter fence and removed the automatic entry gate’s chain from its sprockets allowing him to open the gate manually.

Then he backed his truck up to the trailer, hooked it up and drove off. He was unaware that the trailer was immediately being tracked by the GPS tracking device and was alerting the owner.

Contents in the trailer included:

  • A bed and lawn edger
  • Four lawn mowers
  • Two leaf blowers
  • A line and two weed eaters
  • A garden hose
  • A trash can
  • Hand pruners
  • A pitchfork
  • A broom
  • Loppers
  • Three shovels
  • A rake
  • An ice chest
  • A hedge trimmer
  • Two gas cans
  • A towpower ball mount
  • A lock
  • A spading fork
  • Towpower wheel chocks
  • A cement center block

If the alleged thief is convicted of the trailer and law equipment theft, he could be facing a $5,000 fine and as much as five years in prison. He also faces another $1,000 fine and one year in prison if convicted of stealing the license tag.


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