Shane Neff, a Darnestown resident, said when he went outside Thursday morning to take the car into the shop for a scheduled appointment to get new tires. The car was gone.
“It’s a weird feeling when you wake up and it’s not there,” Neff said. “It’s confusing.”
He said he asked his wife if she got dropped off at home the night before, or parked the car somewhere else. When she said no, he knew it had to be stolen. The couple thought the car was locked, but they didn’t know for sure.
Neff called his neighbor, a Montgomery County Police detective, and also filed a formal complaint online.
The off-duty detective asked Neff if his car had a tracking app. To Neff’s surprise, it did, and he was able to track the car to the streets of D.C.
Neff, a former federal probation officer, said he was worried his car could get destroyed in the time it would take Montgomery County Police to farm out a call because the department’s Auto Theft unit had been disbanded earlier this year, due to defunding.
“The auto theft unit was disbanded six months ago,” Neff said. “They used to have six officers and one sergeant. Now the police don’t have the manpower to go get the cars when people report them stolen.”
Neff said he found his car on 30th Street in Southeast, near Minnesota Avenue.
The front license plate was missing. He also saw footprints in the back seat and passenger areas of the car, so he assumed at least three people jacked his car the night before.
“We looked to make sure no one was standing around the car — since there wasn’t I just hopped in, started it and left,” Neff said. “I did this for a living. I’ve been in unfamiliar neighborhoods before.”
There wasn’t much damage to the car, Neff said, just a scratch on the side. “Not that bad.”
When asked what the car smelled like, Neff said it was different.
“It didn’t have the familiar smell of my wife’s car, but it didn’t smell like weed.”
The other observation was that Neff found the car unlocked.
“The criminals left it unlocked. What the hell is wrong with them?”
When he got back home, he reached out to his neighbor across the street to warn him about the theft the night before.
His neighbor said his house was hit too, but thankfully everything was accounted for. His neighbor also said he had a security camera with footage of the theft.
In the footage, Neff could see people in the dark of night, using flashlights and gloves to check the car doors in his driveway. Then they went across the street to his neighbor’s driveway.
Neff said his neighbors have a beagle that barks all the time, but in this case, the dog didn’t make a sound.
“I don’t know if the word’s out in some of the other jurisdictions, that it’s easier to steal a car in this county,” Neff said.
These types of calls, he said, now had to be looped in with lower-level crimes. Neff said his detective neighbor said there had already been 500 auto thefts in Montgomery this year.
Montgomery County police did not return a request for comment by the publication of this story.
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Montgomery Co. man recovers his own stolen car from DC - WTOP
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