Family's 'terrifying' find on car after visit to Aussie airport: 'Sleepless nights'

An Aussie family are living in fear after allegedly discovering a tracking device attached to their car’s fuel tank following a trip to the airport.

A woman, who has requested to go by the name Cheetah, told Yahoo News Australia the ordeal began on Thursday as she, her partner and their two kids, aged 9 and 7, took a friend to Brisbane International Airport.

The mum said she waited in their Mazda 2 at the drop-off zone with her son while her partner and daughter walked their friend inside because “it was her first time going there”.

“While we were waiting I heard a thud at the back of the car and I tried to look around, because I thought somebody hit the car with their luggage or something because it was quite a loud thud,” she told Yahoo on Monday.

Unable to see anything obvious, Cheetah assumed something had fallen or shifted inside the car.

After about 30 minutes — during which the Gold Coast resident was requested to do a lap of the airport by a security guard after overstaying her allocated 15 minutes — the rest of the family returned and they drove home.

“My friend ended up missing her flight so we had to take her to the Gold Coast Airport the next day because that was the only flight that she could get,” she explained.

“Because we did that trip, when we got home later that night my partner’s phone lit up with a notification saying that an Apple AirTag had been travelling with him and maybe tracking his location.”

Shocked family 'find Apple AirTag under car'

Cheetah claimed her partner’s Samsung phone then gave the option of sounding an alarm on the tracking device. Initially believing their friend’s Apple AirTag had fallen off her bag, the couple searched the entire sedan.

“So we were checking the whole car and we couldn’t find anything but we could hear this like, it has a really high tone, so we were trying to follow the tone,” she said.

“My partner just had this crazy idea to search the outside of the car and he’s seen this like black thing on the fuel tank and at first he thought — because it was like pitch black outside — he thought it was a part of the fuel tank.”

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However, it didn’t take the hobby mechanic long to realise the small black box didn’t belong and pulled it off. “That’s when we realised what had actually happened,” she said, adding it was at that moment the loud noise from the day before replayed in her mind.

Cheetah said she then jumped in the car and asked her partner to put the device back on while standing a few feet away. “He threw it up and it latched instantly and made the exact same noise that I heard before while we were sitting at the airport,” she said.

Family struggling through sleepless nights

After disabling the device, the family told Yahoo they reported the “terrifying” incident to local police before contacting the Australian Federal Police.

The mum claimed “very concerned” authorities asked her a series of questions including what type of car she drives, if she had children with her and if they were carrying any expensive-looking luggage, but so far no reason for the device has been identified.

“So many things have run through our heads since this happened. So it’s just been the fear of the unknown,” Cheetah said. “We’ve had a lot of sleepless nights and [the] kids are in our bed at the moment. We’re just so scared. We don’t know why this has happened.”

Cheetah said she dropped off the AirTag to police on Saturday for an investigation, however the AFP and Queensland Police told Yahoo they have no “reports of that nature”.

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