NEWARK, N.J. - Three bus thefts within five days of each other in the New York-New Jersey area have operators on alert.

A 2003 MCI E4500 coach was stolen off the streets of New York City on April 3; a 1998 MCI DL3 was taken a few days earlier from a hotel parking lot in Lyndhurst, N.J., and a Greyhound coach was taken from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There was a bizarre connection between the Lyndhurst and Port Authority thefts.

The E4500 was broken into, hot wired and driven away during the early morning hours from where it was parked with other coaches in a permitted area. The coach belongs to Stratton Charter of Cuba City, Wis., a small community in southeast Wisconsin about a dozen miles from Dubuque, Iowa.

The coach was transporting a choral group from Orfordville, Wis., to New York for a FAME Show competition.

The bus was found four days later in Newark, N.J., by police. It had at least two side windows broken, the door was damaged, and the right side of the body was dented and scratched. Worse, all of the coach's A/V and electronic equipment had been stolen - six video monitors, DVD player, cordless microphone and other gear.

"The thieves obviously knew what they were doing and what they were after," said one industry executive familiar with the theft. The miscreants had hot wired the coach to start and drive it.

The vehicle was eventually taken to the MCI Fleet Support Center in Blackwood, N.J.

The Lyndhurst theft was a coach belonging to Virginia Coach Co. of Purcellville, Va., and occurred March 31. It was taken from the parking lot of a Quality Inn in Lyndhurst, which is in northern N.J., less than a dozen miles directly north of Newark. The driver had gone for a walk at 8 p.m. and the coach was in the lot. After a two-hour nap, he got up, looked out the window, and the coach was gone.

The coach is painted white with Virginia Coach livery and the word Virginia in block letters mounted below the windshield. It has a Virginia license plate, No. E35509, a VIN No. 50130, and bears the vehicle ID No. 9815 on each side in the top corners of the windshield, and above the passenger door and driver side window.

What made the Virginia Coach theft bizarre was that a Greyhound that had been stolen that same evening from the Port Authority terminal was abandoned in the Quality Inn parking lot not far from where the Virginia Coach bus had been parked.

It was as if the miscreants swapped coaches.
Stealing a motorcoach is not difficult - if you know what you are doing - but guarding against it is a chore. Short of camping out in the bus with a shotgun, a determined and knowledgeable thief can break in and hot wire a vehicle. And, say experts, there are few fool-proof gadgets that will deter smart and motivated thieves.

A hidden "kill" switch that disables the electrical system is a fairly common solution but such a switch is not, of course, foolproof. That's because the driver has to use it - or remember to use it, and disgruntled former employees know about it.

Today's sophisticated electronics make theft more difficult but frequently such systems only work after the coach has been taken and is tooling down the road. If a crook is only after the coach's electronic gear, the vehicle may not need to be moved for the theft to take place. Entry through a roof vent left open doesn't even require a break-in.