Stolen 5am while standing on the passenger side brushing the snow off

When it’s 5:40am and your brushing the snow off your car in a parking lot no one is expecting someone to steal your vehicle right in front of you. That was exactly what happened on Dec 22. By 8:30am it was on Lightcatch. And then the car seemed to dissappear.  No one saw the car in Red Deer that day.

At 3pm on Dec 23, everyone got the answer why it had not been seen. The thief had headed straight north and used a stolen debit card in Lacombe, Alberta by 6:10am on Tuesday Dec 22. This was 34km north of the original theft location.

On Dec 26 at midnight the vehicle was seen in Edmonton. The Lightcatch user had updated both the app and Facebook the vehicle had been found.

The next day the owner of the vehicle wrote this on the Lightcatch app.

Hey everyone, thanks for your help. my vehicle was recovered in Edmonton this morning. the morning he stole it from me (Dec22), he drove to edmonton, and then used it to steal a different vehicle from a skip the dishes driver. (a seniors home nearby caught it on video)

But a clown like this is also a dinosaur. Sooner or later enough people in communities will leverage just enough technology that they will become closer and closer to extinction.

Here’s how thieves like this can be stopped even faster next time.

1) The property manager could have security cameras on their property. In this case they didn’t. Full parking lots are good targets for thieves. There are lots of vehicles in one spot so the chance of getting something of value goes up.
a. Tenants could voice how much thefts like this are personally costing them. If landlords begin to understand their indifference is costing them in frustrated tenants and possibly lost business they can make the change. Decent cameras and decent lighting is not that expensive.
b. It’s not like this should be a surprise to the landlord. Red Deer has the 10th highest crime rate in Canada as a City.  The City has been in the top 20 for years.

2) If the property manager has decent cameras they could have made the alert on behalf of the tenant in seconds. In this case someone may have been able to spot the vehicle heading north before it got all the way to Lacombe.

3) Use the Lightcatch app before you experience a crime. Help protect your community. The person affected downloaded the app and created the alert at 8am. But if they had the app at 5:40am and had created the alert then the thief may have been stopped even faster.

4) When criminals understand a community is watching they often try crime somewhere else.

Protect your community with lightcatch.  Download links for the app are at www.lightcatch.net
Protect your property better with Crime Blocker .  The service has some great insights any property owner can use.  we saw after analyzing thousands of reported crimes.