Tire thieves leave Prince George’s County drivers’ cars on crates

Prince George’s County drivers are waking up to a costly surprise: vehicles left sitting on crates after thieves strip all four tires overnight. The thefts have shown up in District Heights, New Carrollton and other parts of the county, adding tow charges, repair bills, insurance deductibles and missed work to what starts as a quick wheel grab.

The most unsettling cases have come from apartment complexes, where drivers say the thieves move fast and vanish before anyone can stop them. In District Heights, Dasia Holmes said all four tires were stolen from her car at Lerner Surrey Square apartments even after she used two tire locks, an AirTag and a wheel lock. A neighbor said similar thefts at the complex had been happening since May 2022, and Holmes said the gates were broken and open around the clock. In New Carrollton, thieves stole all four tires from two vehicles at an apartment complex, another sign that the problem is hitting shared parking lots where cars sit for hours overnight.

The pattern is not confined to one block or one city. Recent incidents have been reported in Suitland, Silver Spring and parts of Virginia, showing a regional theft wave moving through the DMV. In Prince George’s County, the cases are folded into the broader auto-from-theft category, which county figures showed had more than 1,100 reports so far in 2026. County police say those numbers are collected by the Joint Analysis Intelligence Center, and they caution that crime reporting can vary depending on the system used, making direct comparisons difficult.

Tow truck driver Beebo Aburish of A-One Towing said he first started seeing the wheel-theft trend in 2019 and began posting videos about it during the pandemic. By early 2024, he said he had already seen more than 10 wheel-theft incidents across the DMV that year and was getting multiple calls a week. He said thieves are using wheel-lock kits and can take wheels in less than a minute, a pace that leaves drivers little chance of catching them in the act.

Prince George’s County published vehicle-theft prevention tips in February 2025, saying theft from autos is often a crime of opportunity. Aburish has urged drivers to use aftermarket wheel locks, keep the wheel-lock key out of the car and install motion or tilt sensors that trigger an alarm when a vehicle is jacked up. For drivers already hit, the damage is immediate and expensive, and for apartment complexes with broken gates or weak lot security, the message is just as clear: the thieves are keeping up, and the protections are not.