Spate Of Thefts Of Luxury Cars In Chiswick

One local resident had two high-value cars taken in past week outside his house

A Chiswick resident has told of how two luxury vehicles have been stolen behind locked gates outside his home in the past week, as police report "an unusual rise" on the theft of high value cars.

The thieves, who stole the man's luxury Porsche last week, having broken into his house in the Bedford Park area at around 5 pm last Wednesday, returned this week to take another high-value BMW parked outside. It is thought they took the keys to the vehicles. Both incidents took place in the late afternoon while family members were in the house.

The resident told Chiswickw4.com that on the second occasion, last Tuesday around 4 pm, he was working in his study when he heard his car being started in the driveway outside his house-it was parked behind locked gates.

"I jumped up and saw a guy trying to drive it away. I ran out to try to apprehend him but when he spotted me he just drove through the gates, crashed into a parked car on the other side of the road and then went off at high speed in Acton direction. It was all over in about thirty seconds."

He has asked people in the Acton/Ealing area to keep a watch out for the car which is a black 'soft top 135 I' , registration LR09 ZBF and might have sustained some damage. He described the thieves as "quite brazen", as his son was in the house at the time of the burglary at 5 pm last Wednesday.

The Porsche has since been recovered in Buckinghamshire.

The resident who is originally from South Africa, which has one of the highest crime and car-theft rates in the world, said that he had been living here about six years and didn't expect this to happen in London. He said he had called BMW to organise for a tracking device to be fitted on the vehicle, which is about six years old, and the car was stolen before he could take up the appointment.

Range Rovers and BMWs are preferred targets

The incident is being dealt with by Ealing police, but a spokesman for Chiswick police said they had had three other high value vehicles reported taken in the past ten days in W4.

"Our advice for this is simple, but effective. Purchase and fix a decent 'crook' lock to the vehicle. This means that even when the thieves use highly technical methods to get in to and start the car, they are not able to drive it away."

He said this proved very useful stopping similar offences last year the police were keen to prevent groups coming to the area to steal cars- Good security would deter them.

Recently thieves have been stealing cars from underground car parks in Chiswick and Brentford, by smashing through security barriers.

February 4, 2016