Howard County Police deflated a spree of airbag thefts, saying they found 31 of the safety devices in a stolen car and arrested two people.
A police spokesman said Wednesday nine of the airbags appear to have been taken from nine separate cars in the county.
The two people who were arrested are a 25-year-old man and 15-year-old boy, both from Baltimore, said Seth Hoffman, Howard County Police public information officer. The 25-year-old has not been formally charged yet.
Police found the pair’s vehicle, which appears to have been stolen after a witness to one of the thefts provided officers with the vehicle description, Hoffman said.
Body camera footage from the police showed that after responding to multiple airbag thefts in the Columbia area, they located the stolen airbags in the backseat of a car at 2:45 a.m.
After smashing the driver-side windows in the cars, most of which were Hondas, someone took the airbags, the body camera footage showed.
In March, 22-year-old Jose Reyes was charged with 25 counts across Howard, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties related to alleged airbag theft from Hondas, according to reporting from WBAL.
Hoffman said that the county has occasionally seen multiple airbags stolen in a single night.
To replace airbags, it can cost anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 and can even go up to $5,000, according to Root Insurance.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau, a nonprofit organization that partners with insurance companies and law enforcement to help prosecute insurance crimes, said vehicle owners and their insurance companies have seen an annual loss of over $50 million from the roughly 50,000 airbags stolen each year.
The thefts are under investigation, and police expect to release more information, Hoffman said.
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