Two good car antitheft measures are AirTags and stick shifts

A carjacker in Chicago has been recently apprehended thanks to an AirTag that directed authorities to him, and a stick shift he couldn't use.

The would-be carjacker, Andrew Moran, allegedly knocked on the victim's driver side door as she sat in the parking lot of a strip mall in a part of Chicago.

Moran instructed the victim to get out because he "needed" to take the car because someone would murder him if he didn't, according to the prosecution. The woman exited the vehicle and dialed 911 from a nearby store because she thought Moran had a pistol in his jacket pocket, according to CWBChicago.

According to the prosecution, Moran struggled to move her Audi A3 while she dialed for assistance because he wasn't familiar with driving a stick shift. Finally, he gave up and fled after hearing police sirens, but surveillance cameras caught the entire carjacking attempt.

He ran from the scene with the victim's keys, which had an AirTag attached. Police tracking him realized the key fob was traveling along a train.

They intercepted an inbound train at the Addison station and arrested Moran. Police found the woman's key fob on the train car, and a passenger allegedly told them Moran dropped it as they arrived.

During a court appearance on Saturday afternoon, Moran was charged with aggravated batter of officers and vehicle hijacking. Judge Charles Beach ordered him to pay a $15,000 bail deposit to be released on electronic monitoring.

The Apple AirTag is an item tracker that can be attached to objects like backpacks or keychains. When in lost mode, it uses the Find My ecosystem to ping adjacent Apple devices so people can find them.

Apple's tracking device has saved others as well. For example, a woman in Australia discovered that her boyfriend was tracking her with an AirTag in February.

"It wasn't until I told him I was going to the police to report it that he finally confessed," she continued. "I felt so violated and I was in a state of shock. It just blew my mind that someone I trusted so much could do something like this."

She has since ended the relationship.

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19 Comments

badmonk 1332 comments · 11 Years

About 1 year ago

mikethemartian 1485 comments · 18 Years

It has to be embarrassing when you try to steal a car and can’t figure out how to drive it.

mSak 24 comments · 5 Years

mikethemartian said:

It has to be embarrassing when you try to steal a car and can’t figure out how to drive it.

I can imagine this will be increasingly more and more the case where more US folks don't know how to drive manual due to the proliferation of EVs.

antiprotest 8 comments · 9 Years

Apple's tracking device has saved others as well. For example, a woman in Australia discovered that her boyfriend was tracking her with an AirTag in February.

"It wasn't until I told him I was going to the police to report it that he finally confessed," she continued. "I felt so violated and I was in a state of shock. It just blew my mind that someone I trusted so much could do something like this."

She has since ended the relationship.

The above is not another example of the AirTag saving somebody, but an example of iOS notification saving someone FROM an AirTag. It is an example of an AirTag used for a bad purpose -- the opposite of what the article tries to illustrate.

AppleZulu 2176 comments · 8 Years

antiprotest said:

Apple's tracking device has saved others as well. For example, a woman in Australia discovered that her boyfriend was tracking her with an AirTag in February.

"It wasn't until I told him I was going to the police to report it that he finally confessed," she continued. "I felt so violated and I was in a state of shock. It just blew my mind that someone I trusted so much could do something like this."

She has since ended the relationship.

The above is not another example of the AirTag saving somebody, but an example of iOS notification saving someone FROM an AirTag. It is an example of an AirTag used for a bad purpose -- the opposite of what the article tries to illustrate.

The article is correct. The Air Tag's anti-stalking feature alerted the woman to her boyfriend's misuse of the device, likely not the only nefarious thing he was up to. It gave her some vital information she needed to respond appropriately before things got further out of hand. The notification didn't save her from the Air Tag. It saved her from the untrustworthy boyfriend. Tracking tags have been on the market for years. Apple is the first to respond with a built-in solution to the fact that the device can be misused in this way.