BROOKHAVEN, Ga. — Three luxury cars worth a combined $400,000 were found sitting behind a Buford Highway motel - and when three men showed up to get in them, police pounced.
The Brookhaven Police Department shared the story in a Facebook post on Monday.
The department said it was alerted on Friday to "be on the lookout" for a stolen Rolls Royce. Police then found the Rolls Royce behind the unidentified motel, and as it happened it was with two other stolen Maseratis.
"The officers quickly determined all three vehicles were stolen from a dealership in Texas," Brookhaven Police said on Facebook.
"Local motels and hotels, they are high crime places in our city unfortunately, in the Buford Highway corridor, so they started checking the local motels and that's how they were able to find them," Sgt. Carlos Nino told 11Alive. "Just good old police work, really getting out there and doing what officers are supposed to be doing, and obviously a little bit of luck as well."
Then they began surveillance on the cars, and eventually three men - identified as 31-year-old Yves Amakon of Snellville and two Texas men, 30-year-old Lester Price Jr. and 24-year-old Julian Callahan - came back to the cars.
"What they decided to do was to basically to sit back and stake out the are and watch for the drivers to come out and get in those cars," Sgt. Nino said. "So luckily they did, they came out and at that point officers decided to move in, gave verbal commands.They obeyed and were taken into custody without incident."
All three were charged with theft by receiving stolen property.
Brookhaven Police said the cars will be returned to the Texas dealership.
It's not clear if the men will be extradited back to Texas.
"One of the officers in particular, he's the go-getter type and the level of professionalism and dedication that all those officers involved showed, it just tells you the quality of officers that we have," Nino said. "They were not in undercover vehicles, they were in marked patrol cars, so they had to be very tactical in the way they set up and where they set up and actually move in to the suspects once they came out, and not basically escalate the situation. So yeah kudos to our officers for sure."
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