Jeremy Merckel revealed he’s now looking into renting a garage just to keep his VW Golf safe from car cannibals after three crimes in two years
Jeremy Merckel holds VW badge from his car and phone with CCTV footage showing a previous raid.(Image: No credit)
A Birmingham dad asked ‘why me’ after awaking in the middle of the night to find criminals stripping his car for the third time in two years.
Jeremy Merckel stirred at 3am on Sunday, August 17 as two men started dismantling his Volkswagen Golf GTI outside his Sutton Coldfield home.
Car cannibals managed to remove most of the fixings and the badge, but were scared off by the driver before they could finish the job. It was the third time his pride and joy had been targeted – despite living in what he called a “reasonably decent suburb.”
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His car was targeted in September 2023 and again in March this year.
Mr Merckel said on his LinkedIn account on Sunday: “Some of you may remember my car woes earlier this year. I awoke to find the front end had been stolen overnight. It was the second time I’d experienced this.
“Well, at 3am a noise woke me with a start. That noise was two men in the process of stripping my car again.
“Luckily, I was able to cause enough of a fuss that they abandoned their mission.” The dad-of-three is now looking to rent a garage to protect the motor from being cannibalised yet again.
“Where do I go from here? This is going to happen again, isn’t it? I live in a reasonably decent suburb of Birmingham,” he continued.
Ring footage shows the moment a brazen thief made off with Jeremy’s bumper from his Volkswagen Golf GTI.(Image: No credit)
“I street park as I live in a terraced house. I don’t have a drive or garage. The road is not a main road but reasonable busy. My car is a 70k mile, six-year-old Golf GTI. It’s fabulous. But it’s not ostentatious or particularly unusual.
“Why the Golf? Why me? The obvious answer is to sell. But why should I? And what guarantee is there the next car won’t suffer a similar fate?
“I’m looking into renting a garage but that seems easier said than done round here. And unless it’s very local, it will be an absolute pain.”