My brazen car prowlers turn out to be state’s ‘Most Wanted’
The case of the bungled car prowl just gets curiouser and curiouser. As hard as this may be to believe, it gets more embarrassing for the Seattle police.
Last week I wrote about how the police mostly ignored my family’s repeated calls to come and bust a vanload of car prowlers that my 14-year-old daughter had tracked using an iPhone app. The thieves were so brazen they held up our stolen stuff in plain view. But we were told by police dispatchers to go home and file an insurance claim.
As it turns out, these weren’t just any car prowlers. They were Washington’s Most Wanted!
You can’t make this stuff up. Six days after we trailed a silver minivan and its occupants for three hours but couldn’t get any help from police, a soccer mom became suspicious of the same van at Marymoor Park in Redmond.
“She called and said it was odd that people were sitting in this van,” says Detective Bill Albright of the Sammamish police. “When we went out I recognized the van from all the wanted bulletins we had posted. We’ve been after these people for months.”
It turns out all three had warrants out for their arrests. Police believe they may have smashed into hundreds of cars stretching back to May.
Last week, as the thieves coincidentally were being arrested, the “Washington’s Most Wanted” TV program planned to air a feature on them.
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