Maynard police looking for ring of car thieves after wild crash caught on video
MAYNARD - Police are looking for what they call an organized ring of thieves who've been stealing cars and getting away with it.
"It was crazy. It felt surreal," said Beth Pilgrim, who woke up after 3:30 Wednesday morning to the wild sound of a car crashing and spinning in front of her home on Main Street in Maynard. "I got up and I saw all of these police officers converged here and I saw the car wrecked," said Pilgrim.
It had crashed into another neighbor's parked truck. The owner woke up to find the truck totaled. "It sounds like the movies. It's not what I'm accustomed to in my life. I think we have a very safe town and I think of what happened as kind of radically an anomaly," he said.
A nearby security camera caught the crash on video. Police are circulating the images of the driver seen running out of the wrecked stolen grey Toyota Avalon and getting away.
It was the personal car of the owner of Brown's Body and Paint used car shop. He had left it in the lot overnight with the keys in it. He said the needle on the speedometer is now stuck on 88 mph. Thieves also stole a truck from the same lot, which later turned up abandoned nearby on Route 27. That's where police say they spotted eight to 10 people getting in and out of several stolen cars and speeding off.
Police say they then saw the Toyota speeding the wrong way on Main Street. The department's policy limits high speed chases. Maynard police are working with investigators in other towns with recent vehicle thefts, including Concord, Medford, Marlboro, Leominster, and Sudbury.
Sudbury is where police spotted, but then lost sight of one the stolen cars again Wednesday night. "To come the next night in the same car, one town over, that's very brazen," said Maynard Police Chief Michael Noble.
He's now putting out a plea for information and reminding people to lock vehicles. "It's very challenging because they come into town in stolen cars, so we can't trace those back to them," he said. "They're definitely coming in organized and knowing what they're doing."
