COLUMBUS, Ohio — John Glenn Columbus International Airport is defending the safety inside its parking garage after a woman said her car was stolen and later found stripped of its parts on the side of the road.
Katie, who asked 10TV not to use her last name because there have been no arrests in her case, said she’s a frequent flyer and always parks in the parking garage. Not anymore.
“That’s an environment we assume it’s safe and secure, and it’s not,” she said.
Katie told 10TV that she and her husband parked their Jeep Cherokee in the airport's garage on Thursday. When they arrived on Sunday, the SUV was gone.
They walked the fifth-floor lot thinking they may have forgotten where they parked. They pressed the alarm on their key fob and the car could not be located.
When they approached an airport police officer, they did not receive the response they were hoping for.
"He indicated that we would never find out what happened to our car because the surveillance cameras inside the attached garage at Port Columbus are very scarce and often down. That’s what he said," Katie described.
The couple said they were also told that the machine that takes photos of license plates when vehicles exit the garage also didn’t capture their car leaving and could not produce a report that the car left the garage.
Six days after the couple first parked at the airport, their car was located on the side of the road and had been stripped of almost all of its parts.
Katie is now demanding the airport fix what she calls a public safety issue.
"Let's get the car out of the picture. This is a safety issue. We are lucky that was just an object. If something happened to someone in the garage, it is not monitored. There isn't surveillance. I think this should send alarm bells to our community," she said.
A John Glenn International spokesperson gave the following statement about the situation:
"Safety and security are our top priorities at John Glenn Columbus International Airport. Part of our strategy includes property surveillance to support our police team. John Glenn International maintains over 800 cameras throughout the airport, and we continuously work to upgrade and improve this system to enhance security. Our security cameras are operational, including the cameras in the garage. Remember, this is an ongoing investigation, and we are combing through literally days’ worth of footage where an estimated 13,000 cars entered and exited our garage. While incidents like this are rare, cars can be stolen from any parking lot, including ours. Ten vehicles have been stolen from the parking garage over the past six years. To put that in perspective we expect between 900,000 to 1 million vehicles to park in the garage in 2024. This is an unfortunate instance; we feel for the victims and are working to complete this investigation promptly.”