{"id":77381,"date":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/77381\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","slug":"dad-in-decent-birmingham-suburb-awakes-at-3am-to-find-criminals-stripping-car-for-a-third-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/77381\/","title":{"rendered":"Dad in ‘decent Birmingham suburb’ awakes at 3am to find criminals stripping car for a THIRD time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"NoJeremy Merckel holds VW badge from his car and phone with CCTV footage showing a previous raid.(Image: No credit)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Merckel stirred at 3am on Sunday, August 17 as two men started dismantling his Volkswagen Golf GTI outside his Sutton Coldfield<\/a> home.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Police flood Kitts Green street as boy, 17, arrested and drugs recovered<\/a><\/p>\n

His car was targeted in September 2023 and again in March this year.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d experienced this.<\/p>\n

“Well, at 3am a noise woke me with a start. That noise was two men in the process of stripping my car again.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“Where do I go from here? This is going to happen again, isn\u2019t it? I live in a reasonably decent suburb of Birmingham<\/a>,” he continued.<\/p>\n

\"NoRing footage shows the moment a brazen thief made off with Jeremy’s bumper from his Volkswagen Golf GTI.(Image: No credit)<\/p>\n

“I street park as I live in a terraced house. I don\u2019t 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\u2019s fabulous. But it\u2019s not ostentatious or particularly unusual.<\/p>\n

“Why the Golf? Why me? The obvious answer is to sell. But why should I? And what guarantee is there the next car won\u2019t suffer a similar fate?<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m looking into renting a garage but that seems easier said than done round here. And unless it\u2019s very local, it will be an absolute pain.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremy Merckel revealed he’s now looking into renting a garage just to keep his VW Golf safe from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,36828,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-77381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-sutton-coldfield","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}