While I almost posted this in Squatch's thread, I decided I didn't want to take over his thread with this story. Then I figured there may be some others with better or worse experiences that may also want to share.
This is our almost scary experience of my wife's 1996 ZJ being stolen.
It was about 9PM on New Years Day 1999 and about 15 degrees with snow and wind. Everyone was leaving my grandparents house. It started with my aunt and uncle starting their car to let it warm up. 10 minutes later I had to move the Grand Cherokee so they could pull out. I pulled back in and left it running to warm up. I went into the house and helped my dad move a homemade tabletop into the attached garage. I went back in the kitchen, grabbed the car-seat carrier with my 6 1/2 month old son in it, walked through the garage and out through the front man door...into a driveway that was empty except for snow. OMG! The Jeep is gone! Very luckily that happened before I put my son inside it and returned to the kitchen to pick up my daughter while the wife carried the diaper bag and some left over food. We called the police and I went outside to follow any footsteps. I got about 1/2 a block when I saw that they started where a random car pulled into an unplowed driveway then turned around. A couple minutes later the police went cruising pretty fast right past Grandma's street. I was thinking WTF while my day yelled, "Hey over here!" as if they could hear him. No other police showed up but 4 or 5 minutes passed when we got a call telling us where to get our Jeep back. It was less than 1/2 a mile away and was stopped behind another car at a traffic light. Due to that road being in two different towns and not all cross roads lining up, the road that cop we just saw minutes earlier was headed straight towards the driver side of our Jeep. The guy driving it saw him coming and his eyes nearly popped out of his head, but having too much traffic to get away, he threw it in park, jumped out and ran diagonally through at least a couple different yards with 15 inches of snow. He totally avoided being captured and ended up stealing another car that was warming up several more blocks away. A co worker of my wife told her the next day at work that her father always listened to the police, fire and other stuff from several towns on his scanner. It turns out there were almost a dozen vehicles stolen that night where we were. Only two were recovered, ours and one that was crashed. IIRC that perpetrator didn't get caught either.
There was no damage the Jeep. Heck, he forgot to even take the bag with left over desert that he opened to check out at some point.
God only knows what would have happened to the Jeep if it weren't for that traffic light and even worse, what would have happened Matthew if I had put him in there
This is our almost scary experience of my wife's 1996 ZJ being stolen.
It was about 9PM on New Years Day 1999 and about 15 degrees with snow and wind. Everyone was leaving my grandparents house. It started with my aunt and uncle starting their car to let it warm up. 10 minutes later I had to move the Grand Cherokee so they could pull out. I pulled back in and left it running to warm up. I went into the house and helped my dad move a homemade tabletop into the attached garage. I went back in the kitchen, grabbed the car-seat carrier with my 6 1/2 month old son in it, walked through the garage and out through the front man door...into a driveway that was empty except for snow. OMG! The Jeep is gone! Very luckily that happened before I put my son inside it and returned to the kitchen to pick up my daughter while the wife carried the diaper bag and some left over food. We called the police and I went outside to follow any footsteps. I got about 1/2 a block when I saw that they started where a random car pulled into an unplowed driveway then turned around. A couple minutes later the police went cruising pretty fast right past Grandma's street. I was thinking WTF while my day yelled, "Hey over here!" as if they could hear him. No other police showed up but 4 or 5 minutes passed when we got a call telling us where to get our Jeep back. It was less than 1/2 a mile away and was stopped behind another car at a traffic light. Due to that road being in two different towns and not all cross roads lining up, the road that cop we just saw minutes earlier was headed straight towards the driver side of our Jeep. The guy driving it saw him coming and his eyes nearly popped out of his head, but having too much traffic to get away, he threw it in park, jumped out and ran diagonally through at least a couple different yards with 15 inches of snow. He totally avoided being captured and ended up stealing another car that was warming up several more blocks away. A co worker of my wife told her the next day at work that her father always listened to the police, fire and other stuff from several towns on his scanner. It turns out there were almost a dozen vehicles stolen that night where we were. Only two were recovered, ours and one that was crashed. IIRC that perpetrator didn't get caught either.
There was no damage the Jeep. Heck, he forgot to even take the bag with left over desert that he opened to check out at some point.
God only knows what would have happened to the Jeep if it weren't for that traffic light and even worse, what would have happened Matthew if I had put him in there
