Rising catalytic converter thefts hit Delaware residents, businesses

For Macon Garway, Dec. 23 started out like any other Thursday.

He left his Newark apartment around 8:50 a.m. and headed to his car, ready to spend another day delivering medical equipment and supplies to hospitals and nursing homes in the area. But when he started the vehicle, he heard an “extremely loud sound.”

He got out of the car and popped the front hood, praying it wasn’t an engine problem. Repairs would be expensive, and money was tight with Christmas only a few days away. 

The sound, he soon realized, was actually coming from the bottom of the car. He crawled down underneath the vehicle to find the back of his exhaust pipe hanging on the ground with the catalytic converter gone.

“I never expected this to happen,” Garway said. “Never in my wildest dreams.”

Garway was just one of many growing victims of catalytic converter thefts in Delaware. The converters – which make car exhaust gas less toxic before it’s released into the air – are made of precious metals like platinum, palladium and rhodium. These materials can be scraped or chemically extracted and sold for an ever-increasing profit in resale.

Police nationwide have seen a similar pattern in the past year, Wilmington Police Department spokesman David Karas said, and “Wilmington has not been immune to this trend.”