A Memphis, TN resident’s decision to purchase an AirTag and place it in his SUV helped Memphis police to track and return the stolen vehicle the morning after it was stolen.
Action News 5 reports that Joshua Wylie woke on Friday morning to discover his SUV had been heisted. The Hyundai Santa Fe was stolen from where he had parked it. However, Wylie was prepared for the incident.
Earlier this month, bad guys had broken the car’s passenger window and the steering column had been damaged in an attempt to steal the vehicle. That spurred Wylie to install a security camera in the apartment window pointing at the vehicle.
Wylie also purchased an AirTag and hid it inside the vehicle. With the assistance of Memphis police, the vehicle was tracked down to an address on Tillman, near a police precinct.
“If I didn’t have that AirTag, what I’ve heard is a lot of times they’d drop the vehicles they’ve stolen off at a location, and then they’ll come back later in the evening and strip that vehicle of everything,” Wylie told reporters. “So if I hadn’t had that AirTag to show me where it was so early this morning, it’s very likely there could’ve been thousands of dollars more damage to my vehicle.”
This is not the first time an AirTag had helped owners recover their property. Police in Charlotte, NC, and Portland, Oregon have both recently recovered items, tracking them with an AirTag.
Unfortunately, AirTags have also been used for nefarious purposes. Recently, an Indianapolis man was murdered by being run over repeatedly by a vehicle allegedly driven by his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Gaylyn Morris, is said to have used an Apple AirTag to track her boyfriend, Andre Smith, to a bar where she saw him with another woman.
In May, a Columbia, Tennessee family said their trip to Disney World was ruined after they discovered that someone may have used an Apple AirTag to stalk them during their activities at the Florida amusement park.
(Via AppleInsider)
