"Brazen car cannibals stripped my Golf GTI bare twice but cops are powerless"

SWNS

This is the shocking moment a brazen ‘car cannibal’ walked off with a stolen bumper after a dad’s motor was attacked for the second time.  Jeremy Merckel woke up to discover his beloved Volkswagen Golf GTI had been stripped for parts outside his home.  Thieves had torn the bumper, headlights, windscreen wipers, grille and even the bonnet off his £17,000 motor.  Footage from Jeremy’s neighbour’s Ring doorbell caught one of the crooks casually walking away with the bumper over his shoulder.  The car was parked outside Jeremy’s home in Sutton Coldfield, West Mids., when it was attacked at around 2am last Sunday (16/3).  It is the second time car cannibals – who target certain motors to strip for parts to sell on the black market – had targeted Jeremy’s car.  In September 2023 the dad-of-three had parked the same Golf outside his home when it was stripped bare.  The marketing director now says his insurance has skyrocketed thanks to the two thefts and expects his renewal quote to be over £1,500.

Transcript

00:00My name's Jeremy Merkle, I'm the owner of a Volkswagen Golf which has been what they call car cannibalised for the second time.

00:07Last week I woke up to a message from a neighbour saying,

00:10Jez I'm really sorry but your car's been done again.

00:13I went outside, it was parked just a couple of doors up the road

00:17and the entire front end of it essentially had been stolen.

00:23If you think about it from the windscreen forward, all the body work had been taken overnight.

00:28Trying to wake up and then you are just going, not again, because it's happened once before.

00:35So yeah, it was a pretty depressing sight that just made me feel really angry.

00:39I stood and stared at it for five minutes because I couldn't believe it had just happened again.

00:44The first thing I did actually was put a message out on the neighbour's WhatsApp group,

00:48partly because I wanted them to be aware and partly if anyone had seen or heard anything.

00:52One of the first things that came through is one of the guys a few doors down checked his ring doorbell footage

00:57and there is a video and it is, I'm laughing because it's quite amazing,

01:01but there's a video at 4.12 in the morning of a guy walking down the road with the bumper over his head,

01:07just casually wandering down the road with a massive piece of car above his head and it's just unbelievable.

01:13And then it was just a case of getting the insurance involved and reporting it to the police.

01:17There's just not a huge amount you can do, it's a really tough one.

01:20Last time it happened I simply got, I registered it online and I got a crime number back almost immediately.

01:27There was no, you know, there was no contact or anything.

01:32This time I have to say the police, they have taken it really seriously.

01:35They've been around and taken statements.

01:37They've gathered some of the doorbell footage that the neighbours have got.

01:42You know, I know they've gone and knocked on doors and asked some questions.

01:45So we've had quite a lot of vehicle crime around here unfortunately.

01:49So we all have steering locks now.

01:51You know, if you look at my car and the neighbours' cars, most of them have got steering locks.

01:56We've got alarms.

01:57But you can't lock the bonnet to the car, you can't lock a bumper to the car.

02:03And it just strikes me that, I don't know how they do it, but they can just strip a car in minutes.

02:11Literally minutes that it's often, it's often they're done.

02:15I think this problem does seem to be really prevalent in Birmingham.

02:18I don't know why Birmingham in particular is copying it.

02:20I've got friends around the country and so on who've literally never heard of this as a problem.

02:24We're really startled yet.

02:26I know of, I mean I've been, I've had it twice.

02:30I know of at least two neighbours and other cars locally that have been done in the last couple of years.

02:38And since my story's been out, I've had a number of people get in touch,

02:42other people in Sutton who've also been a victim of this.

02:45But people outside of the area, they don't seem to know about it.

02:49It doesn't seem to be something.

02:51It does feel like it's quite a problem in Birmingham.

02:54And I don't know why that is, but there's clearly somebody who's got quite a nice business running,

03:00repairing cars with stolen parts.

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