Middelburg Dagpatrollie’s Arthur Hill solved what was initially suspected to be a vehicle theft in front of Barcelos in Eskteen Street yesterday, with an empty toilet roll.

The primitive sleuthing resulted in the vehicle being traced to Boksburg yesterday afternoon.

The bizarre story unfolded around 12:00 yesterday, with CCTV footage showing a man climbing into the vehicle and driving away within seconds.

Hill thought it was funny that the man succeeded in getting the vehicle turned on so quickly without a key.

Due to the lighting of the CCTV footage, Hill, at first, could not pick up how the man had broken through the lock and escaped with the vehicle within second of getting inside.

He took an empty toilet roll and pressed it against the CCTV video to focus solely on the headlights.

He immediately picked up that the vehicles lights flicked on-and-off while the man was approaching, and realized that he must have had a key.

He called the owner with the information, who informed him that she had not received a spare key to the car when she bought it.

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A Vehicle theft in front of Barcelos Middelburg, did not turn out to be a vehicle theft at all.

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Hill then asked the owner whether the car was fitted with a tracking device, and she informed him that it was, but that it had been disconnected, according to the dealership she had bought it from.

He nonetheless informed tracking companies of the details, but the vehicle could not be tracked.

The owner told Hill that she bought the vehicle in the Johannesburg area.

With an abundance of contacts on his contact list, Hill started calling security camera operators around Johannesburg.

A short while later he was informed that the vehicle had been picked up by registration recognition software on the M44.

That’s when Hill turned to Google and searched the route for dealerships where he stumbled upon one, fitting the description the owner of the vehicle had given him.

Hill then asked Anton Koen of No Jack Vehicle Tracking to assist with the positive identification of the vehicle, with Koen later confirming that the vehicle was the one ‘stolen’ at Barcelos in Middelburg earlier in the day.

Hill informed the owner who was accompanied to the dealership, where she identified the vehicle as the her own.

That’s where the theft theory became a bit blurry.

According to the dealership, it had been a simple repossession of the vehicle, after the May installment on the car somehow did not go off on the woman’s debit orders.

It was the only missed payment, but the sales contract stated that vehicles would be repossessed by the dealership upon failure of payment.

The owner explained that she did not know how the debit order was rejected, but decided to walk away from the deal following the trauma she was subjected to by the dealership.

Hill slammed the dealership for its shady tactics, with the vehicle having been repossessed with the woman’s handbag, wallet and other belongings still inside.

Due to the fact that the woman decided not to extend her finance with the dealership, and walk away from the contract by mutual agreement with the dealership, the dealership will not be named.

“I agree that she should rather walk away, who does business like that?” Hill said after the success.