A Texas family, tired of their uncle’s gravesite being robbed, secreted an AirTag in a bronze memorial vase, allowing them to catch the thieves in the act. The family’s trick not only led to the arrest of the bad actors for stealing the Uncle’s vase, but also led police to discover more than $62k worth of stolen bronze memorial vases.
Tony Velazquez told Click 2 Houston that his uncle’s gravesite at the Restwood Memorial Park in Clute, Texas, had been robbed repeatedly, with several $600 bronze memorial vases disappearing from his grave.
Velazquez placed an AirTag into the vase in case the thieves struck again. Once the vase had been stolen, Velazquez notified authorities and gave them the AirTag’s information. They used it to track the vase, and dozens more, to a location 45 minutes away, where police arrested the suspects, charging them with stealing 102 vases during the past two months.
Clute Police Chief James Fitch said the thieves had planned to sell the vases at a local scrap yard.
“They had actually tried to take the entire vases to a scrap yard,” said Fitch. “They turned them down luckily.”
