BOSTON (WHDH) - A man tracked his stolen vehicle with GPS, eventually leading Boston police to the men he says took off in his SUV.
Once Colin Beatt noticed one of his cars was missing, and before calling the police, he tweeted: “Someone stole my car which has a GPS tracker so I’m currently chasing them.”
“I hopped in my personal car and was basically following the GPS trying to find the car,” Beatt said.
The search was on, and with a play-by-play on Twitter, Beatt’s next tweet read: “Closing in.”
“It was a little exciting,” he said. “I just wanted to get eyes on the car so I knew where it was and let the police handle it from there.”
But the GPS only updates every four to five minutes, so Beatt had to do a little detective work on his own and make his best guess where the two car thieves might go next.
“It was actually kind of a pain ’cause there was a ton of traffic,” he said. “It was right at 3:30, so it was the slowest chase ever.”
Luckily, Beatt said they stopped at the South Bay Shopping Center, and it was there he tweeted: “Update: I was able to have the car disabled so they can’t drive away. They’re very confused. So they went to Starbucks.”
That was followed by: “They’re back with fresh coffee. Still can’t figure out how to start the car.”
Beatt said the two car thieves hung around at Starbucks for 20 minutes, giving police the time to show up and place them under arrest.
“They came from every direction and grabbed the guys,” he said. “It was pretty crazy.”
The final tweet read: “Mission complete car is safe.”
Beatt said he rents the car on a ride-sharing program, and he believes that’s how the two men were able to get away with his vehicle.
“They had rented the car previously and either made a copy of or kept the key and gone back when they weren’t renting the car and took off in it,” he said.
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