Investigators responding to a violent carjacking in Libertyville, Ill., on Thursday knew they were racing against time. At large was a suspect in a Volkswagen Atlas stolen from a woman’s driveway – with her 2-year-old son still in the back seat.
As officers searched the roads, a Lake County Sheriff’s Office detective thought to contact Volkswagen and locate the vehicle using the manufacturer’s Car-Net service, Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli told The Washington Post.
They hit a problem: A Volkswagen representative told investigators that the vehicle’s “courtesy trial period” for the remote-access service had ended, and they would need to pay $150 to reactivate it and get the SUV’s location, Covelli said.
“The detective basically pled with the representative, letting them know this was a life-or-death situation,” Covelli said, but the representative didn’t budge.
Eventually, a member of the woman’s extended family footed the bill, according to Covelli. They provided a credit card number that investigators used to pay the $150 fee and access Volkswagen’s GPS data for the stolen vehicle. But 30 minutes had passed by then, and the stolen SUV and toddler had already been located by officers in the field, leaving investigators and the family relieved but frustrated.
“Most companies are very good with providing information [when] it could save lives,” Covelli said. “We’ve never had a major delay because we had to provide payment first.”
A Volkswagen spokesperson expressed condolences for the family in a statement and said the company has a procedure in place to address emergency requests from law enforcement.
“Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of the process,” the statement read. “We are addressing the situation with the parties involved.”
Lake County sheriff’s deputies responded to the report of a hijacking in Libertyville, a village about 40 miles north of Chicago, on Thursday afternoon, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office. It said a BMW pulled into the unnamed 34-year-old woman’s driveway behind her Volkswagen as she was returning home. A man exited the BMW and struggled with the woman, knocking her to the ground, according to the statement, then stole the Volkswagen, where her 2-year-old son still sat inside. The man and the BMW driver then fled in the two cars.
One of the drivers ran over the woman as they escaped, according to the statement. She suffered multiple broken bones, Covelli told The Post.
Officers located the child when a person at a business in the nearby city of Waukegan called 911 to report two cars stopping in the parking lot and one driver abandoning a small child there, according to the statement. Officers confirmed that the child was the woman’s son and later located the stolen Volkswagen in a separate parking lot.
The suspects and the BMW, which was reported stolen from a Waukegan car dealership, remain at large, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. Covelli said that the child was unharmed and that the woman remains hospitalized after having surgery over the weekend.
Volkswagen hasn’t responded directly to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Covelli said, but the office intends to follow up with the company to ensure they don’t run into any similar issues in the future.
“Not just for us,” Covelli said, “but anywhere across the U.S. where there’s a life-or-death situation.”
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