A Range Rover worth £100,000, which was stolen in the United Kingdom has been reportedly tracked to Tilbury Port en route to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.
The posh car is said to belong to a couple identified as Anthony and Danielle Wilson living in Essex, near Bishop’s Stortford in the UK.
According to The BBC, the Range Rover got lost in the garage before the couple woke up one morning in July 2022, but was found loaded in a container at the UK port.
The BBC report on Friday said it took the thieves just 63 seconds to steal the Wilsons’ Range Rover Sport from their gated home.
The family’s CCTV system captured the stealing process and showed the two people involved, including how one stole the car while the second thief drove the vehicle they arrived in.
BBC quoted Mrs Wilson as saying, “You can see one of them creeping up the drive.
“He’s literally leaning into my car, doing something, switched the interior light off, and then trundled it down the drive.”
The couple thought they might have been followed by the thieves for some time before the car was taken.
She added that “The 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.”
Also speaking, Mrs Wilson’s husband 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 BBC report further disclosed that 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 learned missing from the driveway.
According to the report, about a month after the car was stolen in July, it was discovered wedged inside a container at the Port of Tilbury in Essex.
Commenting on the incident, the BBC reports that Essex Police’s Stolen Vehicle Intelligence Unit said such theft is on the rise in the UK. In 2021, the three-strong unit recovered about 480 cars. In 2022, more than 600 cars were retrieved.
A criminal intelligence officer focusing on stolen vehicles with Interpol, Renato Schipani, said cars stolen in the UK often end up in African countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Sudan because of the demand for right-hand drive vehicles.
Schipani added that the cars sent to these countries are nearly always large, luxury SUVs, like the Wilsons’ Range Rover.
Meanwhile, it was said that West Africa was the key “hub” for cars stolen from North America and Western Europe because of the demand for left-hand drives.
Schipani said the levels of theft had increased since the Covid pandemic, with more and more vehicles being stolen and exported to Africa amid the rising cost of living.