AirTag helps man find his stolen car and pursue suspect

KTNV, GOOGLE, BLAKE HERMAN, CNN

By Joe Moeller

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    LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A lot of us have Apple AirTags to help track of our luggage.

Well one local man tells me he got his money’s worth in the $25 AirTag because it helped him track down his stolen car, and it was all caught on the car’s video camera.

“I thought it got towed.”

Blake Herman lives in the Lone Mountain area. He woke up one morning and his car was gone.

“Once I saw it was at somebody’s address, I got up and was going to get it back,” he said.

His black Toyota Camry had a tiny Apple AirTag inside. It pinged at a home near Nellis Air Force Base across town.

Herman called police, but before they arrived, he went there.

“While I was doing that, I was on the phone and I let them know I was behind it and that we were moving and they said they don’t pursue stolen vehicles,” Herman said.

He jumped in his other car, a Tesla, which has cameras and records video outside of the car. He has video of him following his own car.

“Yeah, we got into a little pursuit. Maybe a minute to two minutes into me being behind him he turned into a side street. He cut through a community park. I was behind him the whole way,” He said. “He got out, he ran out into a storm drain and walked back home.”

Herman tells me he doesn’t know how the suspect broke into his car because it didn’t appear to be too damaged aside from the driver’s side door.

He found knives in the backseat and a portable air conditioner in his trunk.

He snapped a photo of the man walking away and said he told police which house the suspect went in.

“I had a visual on him. I called Metro and I think I got a response from them three hours later,” Herman said.

I asked Metro about it. They tell me it’s still an open investigation weeks after it all happened.

Herman hopes police can do something.

“The little victim notification they give says all felony crimes will be investigated, but I haven’t heard anything,” he said.

Herman said the $25 AirTag turned out to be a good investment.

The former Marine says his safety crossed his mind but he took he situation into his own hands to get his car back.

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