By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
An individual driving a stolen Honda Civic in Centralia early this morning was nearly caught by police, but abandoned the car and ran off.
A half dozen Hondas were stolen in Centralia and Chehalis between Saturday and Tuesday morning and more have been reported missing each day since then.
According to Centralia Police Department Sgt. David Ross, just before 4 a.m. today, an officer spotted the red car in the area of Oxford Avenue and Marion Street and followed it in part because of odd driving behavior.
“(It) increased its speed and began to make turns through residential streets in an obvious effort to avoid being stopped,” Ross stated.
The driver stopped suddenly and ran, according to Ross.
A K-9 team was called to the scene but were not successful in locating the suspect, according to information from Ross at about 7:30 a.m. today.
The owner of the vehicle was located and it was determined that the vehicle had just been stolen. It was returned to the owner.
Yesterday morning at about 7 a.m., an officer was taking a report of a black 1991 Honda Accord from the same part of town – the 1300 block of Windsor Avenue – when a Chehalis police officer located the unoccupied car in Chehalis.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
I don’t think people left the car keys in all these stolen Hondas. A car with the ignition or the door lock punched out can’t exactly be returned to the owner in any kind of working street-legal condition. So it seems the thieves have pass keys to these cars? How else could they do it?
@Anglo Saxon Pride good idea. They can GPS-equip the bait car; so starting or tampering with it activates a hidden GPS tracking system, and sends a silent alarm to the police to begin monitoring the vehicle. Owners can also install LoJack or something similar to track the vehicle themselves.
The cops need to set up a honda where they can remotely control it and catch these people that are stealing them.Might put a boot in their ass and slow down the theft of Hondas
No that’s way too generic. Let’s just allow the thieves to steal all they want while we arrest homeless people instead.
Dear Centralia police take one of the Honda’s that you have impounded and use it as a bait car. Remove the internal locking devices inside the doors so it then becomes a trap car also. Then use remote remote servo control to disable engine from afar during pursuit. End of line for Honda criminal. Public safety restored. Suspect in jail priceless. Just a thought