Kitchener, Waterloo — Over the past few weeks, car thieves have been setting their sights on high-end vehicles in the Waterloo Region.
According to reporting from CTV News, a Toyota and a Lexus were recently stolen from a neighbourhood in Kitchener.
“We looked up and down the road thinking maybe we parked it down there,” Karly Lavigne told CTV. “No, it was just gone.”
Lavigne’s Lexus RX was stolen last week, alongside various vehicles in the community.
Lavigne says since last Tuesday, six people in the Kitchener Doon South neighbourhood have had their vehicles stolen.
“We keep our keys upstairs, in the furthest spot in the house, in our bedroom, but it still picked it up,” Lavigne said.
Waterloo regional police told CTV car thieves can use relay and reprogramming tech to push the electronic start button and steal vehicles — without having the keys in hand.
Toyota and Lexus cars are the most popular targets in this kind of theft.
On Tuesday, Paul Damaren and two of his neighbours had two of their vehicles taken.
“It was shock,” he said. “It was the fact they had the nerve to not only steal one car on the street, but three within close proximity of each other and all around the same time.”
Luckily for Lavigne her car was recently found in downtown Toronto.
“I was almost as shocked when they told me they had found it the same as the day that I stepped out and it was gone,” Lavigne said. “Normal these things are gone and on a crate in the middle of the ocean within hours.”
The Insurance Bureau of Canada said that since 2017, Toyota Highlanders and Lexus SUVs have ranked at the top of the list for the most stolen vehicles in Canada.
