Mass. family flies home from vacation to find truck stolen from Logan Airport garage

After flying home from a tropical vacation last week, small children and luggage in tow, Brendon Byrnes arrived back in Boston to a nasty surprise. 

Before leaving, the Boxborough resident had taken a photo of his truck to help him remember where he parked at Boston Logan Airport’s central parking. But as Byrnes, his wife, and their three children wheeled their suitcases across the garage sometime after midnight last Thursday, the truck was nowhere to be found.

The parking office had no record of the truck being towed, according to Byrnes, and a thorough search of the garage confirmed the vehicle wasn’t parked somewhere else. Investigators would later determine the truck had been stolen under circumstances eerily similar to a theft that occurred at the same garage just weeks prior.

“You run a risk of getting your car damaged [when parking at the airport] — you know, someone opens a door into it, or even hits it. Maybe someone might break into it,” Byrnes said. “I really didn’t think stealing was possible in the garage.”

He reported the theft to Massachusetts State Police, and the Massachusetts Port Authority — which operates Logan Airport — helped the family get a taxi back from the barracks.

“Everyone that was there was doing their best trying to help out with the situation,” he noted. “But at the end of the day, I don’t have a truck.” 

State Police said troopers responded to the parking office around 1:30 a.m. last Thursday and scoured the garage, but they were also unable to find the truck. They logged the vehicle into the National Crime Information Center as stolen.

The agency also noted similarities between Byrnes’s case and the theft of another truck from the central parking garage sometime between March 4 and March 7. In that earlier incident, State Police said the owner was able to track the truck’s location via an iPad left inside, and authorities in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, located the vehicle and towed it back to their station until the man could retrieve it.

Byrnes said toll records indicate his truck ended up in New Jersey, too, but a State Police detective assigned to the case is still working on a court order to access any available GPS data for the vehicle. He said he learned from the detective that whoever stole his truck got out of the Logan Airport garage by “piggybacking” behind another exiting car.

“I lost hope that I’m seeing that truck again,” Byrnes said. “It’s disappointing.” 

There have been no arrests thus far in connection with the thefts, according to State Police. Both incidents remain under investigation. 

“The salt in the wound was that I paid my parking ticket before going to my non-existent truck, so I had to bounce between two different email addresses and offices and then fill out a form to get a refund,” Byrnes said wryly. 

To make matters worse, the family left their jackets inside the truck upon flying out of Boston on March 20 — they figured they wouldn’t need heavy duty outerwear in tropical weather. With the truck missing, they were left stranded in mid-March temperatures.

“It was not ideal,” Byrnes recalled. “It’s not something you want to come home to on a vacation. It kind of takes any relaxation we had and it’s out the window.”

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.