NYC thieves escape in stolen Rolls-Royce after nabbing keys from Staten Island home but owner outsmarts them
The Rolls-Royce owner was able to turn the stolen vehicle off with a remote kill switch
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The NYPD is searching for multiple suspects involved in a string of burglaries on Staten Island, including the theft of a Rolls-Royce convertible in the middle of the night.
During the June 12 incident, the suspects threw a rock through the window of a home in Staten Island's Lighthouse neighborhood and stole car keys before fleeing in the 2017 Rolls-Royce Dawn sedan.
The owner of the vehicle, identified only as John, told the Staten Island Advance that he was able to turn the tables on the burglars by using a remote kill switch to turn the luxury ride off, then used a built-in tracking device to locate it in Newark, New Jersey.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rolls-Royce Dawns on display during the second press day of the Geneva Motor Show 2017 at the Geneva Palexpo on March 8, 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland. (Gerlach Delissen - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
"I was downstairs within seconds while they were pulling out of the driveway," John told the local newspaper, saying that he made sure his family was ok then started working on getting his car back. "They were attempting to turn it back on, but they couldn’t because I disabled it."
A used 2017 Rolls-Royce Dawn has a typical listing price of around $282,000, according to automotive research company Kelley Blue Book.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The suspects were involved in three other attempted burglaries in the area recently, including two earlier that same evening on June 12.
The NYPD released surveillance footage of the thieves throwing a rock through a window at a separate home on Monday, but they ran off when a resident started yelling.
All five suspects were described by the NYPD as males with a dark complexion. Three of them wore black sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts. One was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt with the word "Kappa" on it, while another was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with white letters on the front.
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Car thefts in Staten Island are up 116.3% this year compared to the same time frame in 2021, according to NYPD data.
Anyone with information about the attempted burglary spree can call NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or 1-888-57-PISTA (74782) for Spanish.