Two people have been arrested for allegedly stealing a Subaru Legacy in New Hampshire, reports WMUR. But they weren’t caught the old-fashioned way. No, they were actually caught because the owner remembered he’d left his AirPods in the car.
Mike McCormack, the owner, said his Subaru was stolen in a matter of minutes because he made a classic cold-weather mistake: He left his car running but unlocked while he was warming it up. McCormack went inside to grab his forgotten water bottle, and when he got back outside, his car had disappeared.
Later, he realised he’d left his AirPods in the car and decided to see if his phone could tell him where his car was.
“I left the gym with my girlfriend and decided to check the find my phone on my iPhone,” he told WMUR. “And my AirPods just — they popped up and said they found [the] location on East Road in Weare, New Hampshire. And I was like, ‘let’s get them right now.”
Concord, NH officers contacted local law enforcement about the stolen car, and three days after it was originally taken, Weare police officers were able to recover the car. The alleged thieves stopped driving when they reached a dead-end and ran off into the woods before later being caught and arrested. The car also appears to be in decent shape, and McCormack said he’s grateful they didn’t wreck it before running off.
“Thankfully, we had some very helpful citizens that were there that were on scene when the when the two suspects fled that were able to give us a good direction of travel and great descriptions of them, which we were able to push that out to our neighbouring mutual aid agencies and get that information out and everything ended safely for everybody,” said Officer Laura Purslow with the Weare Police Department.
It’s certainly neat that some earbuds led police to the stolen car, but also consider this your regular reminder to not leave your car running and unlocked. It’s an easy way to get your car stolen, and you probably won’t have a pair of AirPods in there to help track it down.