ANTHONY and Danielle Wilson awoke at their Essex home to find their Range Rover had vanished. The vehicle was later found loaded on a container at a UK port bound for the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. The Wilsons’ experience, police warn, is becoming increasingly common.
It took thieves just 63 seconds to steal the Wilsons’ Range Rover Sport from their gated home in a village near Bishop’s Stortford.
The theft was caught on the family’s CCTV system. It shows two people involved – one stealing the Wilsons’ car and another driving the vehicle they arrived in.
“You can see one of them creeping up the drive,” said Mrs Wilson, whose parents were staying with them on the night of the theft. “He’s literally leaning into my car, doing something, switched the interior light off, and then trundled it down the drive.”
The couple, who have a three-year-old child, believe they may have been followed by the thieves for some time before the car, which costs about £100,000 new, was taken.
“Police had said there was a chance that I’d been followed because they’d obviously got in it without the keys, so maybe they cloned the key or found a way to get into it when I’d been out and about, and I only ever go anywhere with my little toddler so it worried me then.
“I just found it really scary and the more I thought about it, the worse it got.”
Mr Wilson said: “When you watch the CCTV, it’s almost incredible that somebody walks up to the car, and 63 seconds later is driving an expensive car down the driveway having never seen the keys in their life.”
The car’s tracking system alerted police when it got out of range of the keys, which were still with the Wilsons. Officers arrived at the Wilsons’ home to investigate shortly after the car was discovered missing from the driveway.
About a month after the car was stolen in July, it was discovered wedged inside a container at the Port of Tilbury, in Essex.
