A Florida family took a detour after their Christmas vacation from Miami to the Carolinas turned sour when their luggage was stolen. They used Apple technology to track down the suspect and get their luggage back from the suspect’s house.
Apparently, the luggage of Catherine Gavino and her family was stolen from the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. They realized that someone had snatched it when it wasn’t waiting for them in the baggage claim, and began their search for it using the Apple AirTag.
Gavino was quickly able to use her cellphone and the AirTag, which was hidden inside her parents’ luggage, to find the missing suitcase’s location: heading down Interstage 85 toward Gastonia. So, the family piled in the rental car to follow the missing suitcase and track it on its way west.
Though unable to find the exact location, they were able to track the AirTag to a neighborhood. But, as it wasn’t displaying the exact location, they had to pause the search and focus on vacation and then Christmas Day instead of tracking down the perp and recovering their stolen property.
But, soon enough, Gavino was able to restart the search effort and try to find her parents’ luggage. Her second time had better success, as she was able to use the AirTag to track the suitcase to a specific house in the neighborhood.
Gavino decided to act prudently and safely and contact the police rather than showing up there on her own. Once the police had been alerted, her family’s missing luggage was recovered, along with a suitcase of a different victim whose luggage had been stolen from the Charlotte airport.
Unfortunately for Gavino and her family, though the luggage was recovered, nearly everything was already gone by the time the suspect had been tracked down, and what exactly the perp did with the missing items is still unclear.
Speaking about the situation, Gavino noted that another individual had alerted the police to the location of the missing luggage, as they had an AirTag in it as well. She said, “someone else called with the same issue. And they also had an AirTag.”
Continuing, she commented on what the perp might have done with the stolen goods and why she decided to use the AirTag to go after them, saying, “Police believe they may have sold the clothes for money, who knows. These are my parents, coming to the mountains for a North Carolina view, so for this to happen made me sad, which was all the more reason to go after them…I wouldn’t have found them without this AirTag.”
But while the Gavino family could not, unfortunately, recover most of its stolen property from the perp’s house, as it was already gone, the suspect is facing some degree of justice. Police records from Gastonia show that the suspect has been charged with numerous crimes, including both theft offenses and a drug charge, and is now being held on a $10,000 bond in jail.
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