Woman says her Kia was stolen 4 times in 1 year

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - “To keep getting victimized over and over. It’s unfair,” Mary Therring said.

That’s what’s been happening to her since October, the first time her Kia Sportage was stolen from outside her apartment building near Loring Park, she said.

“It’s frustrating because when you don’t have a garage that you can park it in, you’re just that much more susceptible to it,” Therring said.

She parks her car in the same parking spot every single night, and despite having an engine immobilizer, a club and a security camera trained on her car, thieves decided to steal it anyway.

It’s part of a continuing trend of thefts, both in Minneapolis and across the country.

In 2022 alone, stolen Kias and Hyundais were tied to at least five homicides, 13 shootings, 36 robberies and 265 car accidents in Minneapolis.

Therring‘s car was stolen a second time in January. An attempt in March failed before it was stolen for a third time in July.

“I just got it back two weeks ago, and it was stolen again last night,” Therring said.

Surveillance footage shows the thieves pulling up Thursday, just after 10 p.m..

It took just two and half minutes for them to get into the car, around the security measures and out of the lot.

“When people say, you need to just get rid of it? I say, well, then give me the money to pay my loan off and a down payment on my car and I would gladly do that,” Therring said.

“As far as I’m concerned, these cars need to be taken off the road. That will fix the problem. You either put the criminals in jail, or you take the vehicles off the road so that there’s nothing for them to do,” she said.

Therring said she’s not sure what she’ll do next, but she knows what she won’t do: “I will never buy another Kia ever, no matter how good they are. Never.”