Thieves Break Window With Rock, Drive Off With Rare Dodge and $1.2 Million Worth of Cars

The perpetrators managed to flee with eight cars that were sitting in the North County Ford dealership in Arab, Alabama. The police are running an investigation and have already managed to track down and recover two of the eight vehicles that vanished that night. A Jeep Wagoneer and a Ford Bronco Raptor have been returned to the dealership.

Authorities found the Wagoneer near Blountsville, while the Bronco Raptor was found in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Bessemer.

The thieves managed to override the security systems of the dealership, which was equipped with an extensive camera system, as well as alarms and individual alarms for each of the vehicles on display.

According to the police report, thieves broke into the dealership on April 9, at 12:28 AM by breaking the window of the service bay to have access to the main building. They went in and, the first thing they did was turn off all the cameras in the facility. They also erased several hours of footage to make sure that the police will not have any proof of their presence there.

The employees of the dealership detected a laptop being plugged into the key safe. This is how the thieves manage to open it and steal 330 keys that were stored inside.

They put them all in a bag and, as many of the cars today have keyless entry and start, all they had to do was get close to any vehicle in the showroom, open it, and start the engine of the eight cars they drove off with.

One of the vehicles stolen on that night was a brand-new Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, one of the only 3,300 that the carmaker rolled out before retiring the almighty HEMI for good.

After they completed their mission, the thieves locked the door behind them and drove off. The only evidence that thieves were there was the broken window. The cleaning crew found it shattered on the floor in the morning.

Now, the dealership in Arab, Alabama, is willing to offer a reward of $10,000 cash to anyone who can help them recover the 300 car keys.

Not the first major car theft of the year

This is not the first major car theft that took place this year. Back in March, thieves drove right off the showroom floor, which happened to also be in the state of Alabama, with a brand-new Corvette Z06 Convertible, a GMC Sierra, and a GMC Yukon.

But it wasn't as simple as they thought it would be. Twenty minutes later, the perpetrators were spotted in a gas station some 40 miles away from the dealership in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, with the top of the Corvette still down.

Supposedly, none of them had any idea about how to put the top up, so the driver of the convertible had to suffer through the cold of the early spring. There were only 28 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 degrees Celsius) that night. That time, everything was caught on tape inside the dealership as well as at the gas station.

Police managed to find the GMC Yukon in Birmingham, Alabama, sitting parked behind an abandoned house on a flat tire.