A stolen iPad and Apple’s “Find My” app helped Melbourne, Australia authorities track two bad guys during a deadly car chase following a home invasion.
In a recent home invasion robbery, two suspects reportedly made off with two vehicles and an iPad, the latter of which had Apple’s “Find My” device tracking feature enabled, reads a new report from The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Two men killed during a police chase in Melbourne’s north were being tracked from the air via the ‘Find My’ app after an iPad was stolen in an earlier home invasion,” reads the report. “Driver Vaatoa Chang, 29, and his passenger Jonas Montealegre, 36, carried the iPad with them as they switched stolen cars in a two-hour attempt to flee police on February 4.”
The victim had interconnected Apple devices and helped the police track the stolen iPad using the FindMyiPhone app on his device. The police started following the location shown on the device and tracked the suspects to a local hotel. They were followed using both vehicles on-road and a helicopter from the police’s air wing in the chase that took around two hours.
While evading the police, the men drove their car into a freight truck and died in the accident.
Apple’s Find My app is typically used for locating Apple devices when one has misplaced them, but this is an example of how the app can be used by police in real-time to trace suspects in cases of theft.
