Racer Nate Kern, working with the Amarillo, Texas Police Department, has recovered his stolen trailer and BMW motorcycles—including the BMW R nineT he races in AHRMA events—and is on his way home to Georgia.
Kern credits the motorcycle community for reacting to online posts and contacting him with tips that ultimately led him and the police to the stolen motorcycles and trailer. Kern said he was talking to an officer at a location where a tipster said he had seen Kern’s R nineT streetbike, when a thief rode by on the stolen machine. That set off a high-speed chase that saw Kern (in his tow vehicle) catch the thief on a dirt road and convince him to surrender. The thief then provided information on other people involved in the theft as well as the whereabouts of the missing trailer, the missing racebike, and a missing BMW HP4 RACE track bike.
The ordeal started at about 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, when Kern discovered that the locked trailer had been disconnected from his tow vehicle and stolen from the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express Airport hotel in Amarillo. It ended with Kern again in possession of the stolen trailer and motorcycles at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, May 2nd.
Kern contacted Roadracingworld.com after finding that the trailer had been stolen, and also documented the theft and the search for the stolen trailer and motorcycles on Facebook.
“I got a private Facebook message from a guy who saw the streetbike parked at a FedEx yard, and I found motorcyclists who helped me every step of the way,” Kern told Roadracingworld.com today. “I was actually standing in the FedEx yard, talking to the officer who took the initial theft report, and the guy rode right by on my bike!
“I ran him down in my tow vehicle. The guy told me who the ringleader was, and led us to where the trailer was.Another guy saw the R nineT racebike laid over in the bed of a pickup truck, and sent me a pin to the location, and we found it. The HP4 RACE was hidden in another stolen trailer at another location, a squatter house.
“I especially have to thank the two citizens who really stepped up, the guy who saw my streetbike at the FedEx yard and contacted me, and the guy who saw my racebike in the bed of the pickup truck and dropped me a pin. They don’t want to be named, but they took a chance and got involved, and they’re brothers to me now!
“I’m missing some gear and tools, but at least I have enough that I can keep going. This was an eye-opener. But I had to fight back. I wasn’t going to roll over, and I wasn’t going to leave Amarillo without my bikes! A big thanks goes to the Amarillo Police Department and some dedicated officers who helped me long after their shifts officially ended, to Roadracingworld.com, and to the social media community. Now I have a couple days driving home to think about what I do from here, and how I can make my trailer and bikes more secure.”