Suspected thieves driving Tesla as getaway car get nabbed while charging it

A different
Tesla being charged.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Two people accused of stealing $8,000 of merchandise used a Tesla as their getaway vehicle.
But they stopped to charge it 15 minutes down the road, where police located them.
An image shared by police on social media shows the Tesla packed full of gaming systems.

Two suspects accused of stealing over $8,000 of merchandise in Buford, Georgia were caught 15 minutes down the road after stopping to charge their Tesla getaway vehicle.

Gwinnett County Police told Insider that the suspects were arrested around 10 miles away while attempting to charge the car near the Gas South Arena venue on February 19.

The police shared details of the theft on social media on Sunday alongside images of the car packed full of boxes of gaming systems and electric toothbrushes. In a statement to Insider, a police spokesperson said the thieves were fleeing a Sam’s Club store.

Witnesses told police responding to the 911 call that the pair had fled in the electric vehicle – their description was then broadcast to surrounding officers.

The suspects were found about 15 minutes away.
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It is unclear whether the shoplifters owned the car themselves or if it was previously stolen.

On a full battery, current Tesla models can travel over 300 miles according to the company’s website.

This isn’t the first time that criminals have been thwarted by a Tesla battery. In 2019, a woman in Arizona tried to steal a Model S but it ran out of charge as she drove away.

The following year, a 21-year-old attempted to carjack a Model 3 in California, but when the driver got out he remotely locked the would-be thief inside the vehicle, using his iPhone.

In 2014, The Verge reported that the first person to ever die in a Tesla had stolen the vehicle from a service center before crashing it in a nearly 100 miles-per-hour police chase.