Car stolen from ‘secure’ park
‘‘You’re paying for good safe parking. I mean, I may as well have parked out on the street.’’
A trip south to see Ed Sheeran ended in disaster when Allanah Hill had her car stolen from Wellington Airport’s long-term car park just half an hour before she landed.
Hill, a registered nurse from Upper Hutt, flew to Dunedin on March 30 for a holiday with her partner. The pair were headed to the last of Sheeran’s concerts, last Sunday.
Before they left, she parked her Honda Civic in the uncovered long-term parking area at the southern end of the airport, at a cost of $170. They arrived back on Tuesday, just after 9pm, but couldn’t find the car.
‘‘We were looking around the park. I was saying ‘I’m sure this is where we put it.’
‘‘I always lose my car, I’m famous for it, so I wasn’t too worried at first, but my partner was like, ‘I never lose the car though’.’’
They asked to see security footage in the parking attendant’s office, showing the exit and entrance. Whenever a car drives in or out, a snapshot of its licence plate is taken.
It showed that, at 8.25pm, only 40 minutes before Hill landed, her car was driven out of the car park.
‘‘I watched them leave,’’ she said. ‘‘They followed behind another car really closely and went out right behind it.’’
Hill, 24, filed a report with police, but heard nothing for several days. Then a friend shared a post from a Wellington car group, showing two burnt-out cars. One of them was her Honda Civic.
She tracked down the shell of her car to the Rimutaka Incline and had to pay more money to have it towed away and stored while insurers assess it.
She said she wasn’t mad at the airport, and that ‘‘it could happen to anyone’’, but she could not understand how her car had been stolen from a secure parking lot.
‘‘You’re paying for good safe parking. I mean, I may as well have parked out on the street.’’
An airport spokeswoman said it would refund the cost of her parking, and provide any further help it could. All the airport’s car parks were monitored by CCTV and by parking attendants near the main terminal 24 hours a day. Daily routine checks of all car parks were also conducted, she said.
‘‘This makes the airport’s parking space one of the most monitored car parks in Wellington ... Incidents involving passenger vehicles are very rare and we take the security of passenger vehicles very seriously, working closely with airport police and the customer.’’
Hill had only third-party insurance and was now having to borrow her brother’s car to get to and from work, while saving up for a new one.