'Blown away': Ontario man hit with 2 parking tickets from stolen car

A man from Oakville, Ont. said he felt “violated” after his car was stolen from his own driveway in October.

But it was the letter he received from the City of Mississauga nearly a month after the theft took place that he said really made his blood boil: two parking tickets issued to the stolen vehicle.

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"I was blown away," Danny Latincic told CTV News Toronto.

Both tickets were issued near townhome complexes in nearby Mississauga. The first on Oct. 11 -- the day after the vehicle was stolen and reported to police -- and the second on Oct. 19.

Experts say stolen cars are often left unattended for a cooling-off period, to make sure the car doesn’t have a GPS locating system, which may explain why Latincic’s Lexus SUV was parked illegally after the theft.

And because all stolen cars in Canada are registered on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC), as it was in this case, Latincic wonders why his vehicle wasn’t flagged when it was issued a ticket.

“If these guys [parking enforcement] when they go there with their device, if they type in the licence plate why wouldn't it come up stolen?" he asked.

CTV News Toronto's Allison Hurst interviews Danny Latincic.

According to Cam Wooley, a former OPP officer and CP24 traffic and safety reporter, stolen vehicles are frequently found by police. Moreover, he said that more stolen vehicles could possibly be recovered if parking enforcement was tasked with checking licence plate data against the CPIC.

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“If you think about the number of bylaw officers frequently checking [illegally parked vehicles], if they were all to be checked on CPIC, there's a greater chance of more stolen cars being recovered," Wooley said.

In this case, and like so many others in the GTA, Wooley believes this stolen vehicle was probably destined to be sold overseas where such vehicles are “very popular.”

Latincic doesn’t disagree, but thinks that more could be done to improve communication between parking enforcement and police in the meantime.

"I just can't understand with the technology we have these days they can't make that happen," he said.

Latincic didn’t have to pay the parking tickets in the end and he said his car was covered by insurance. 

With files from CTV News Toronto's Allison Hurst