Teen's missing AirPod leads to arrest of driver accused of hitting him

Lochlan Nicol, 15, of Jensen Beach, Florida, was riding his bike to a gas station and convenience store near his home to buy ice cream last week when an oncoming driver suddenly turned into the gas station and hit him, he said.

It was about 10.30pm on May 22 when Lochlan was hit so hard that his head crashed through the rear passenger window, breaking his nose, cheekbone and eye socket and rendering him unconscious.

According to Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder, the driver pulled Lochlan off the road, left him in front of the gas station and drove away.

What the driver didn't know was that he had driven away with a tracking device – the AirPod Lochlan had been wearing, which had been knocked out of his ear and became lodged under a floor mat in the car, Sheriff Snyder said.

Using the AirPods' location tracking feature, the Martin County Sheriff's Office said Friday that Peter Bradford Swing, 49, of Jensen Beach, was arrested and charged with failure to stop for an accident involving serious bodily injury, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

“This earpiece enabled the suspect to be tracked directly to the suspect's home in Jensen Beach,” the sheriff's office said in a statement. Officers found the silver Hyundai Santa Fe involved in the crash behind Mr. Swing's home. The rear passenger window was broken, the sheriff's office said.

“It was just a coincidence,” Sheriff Snyder said in an interview Tuesday. “There's no moral to the story. It was one of those things. It was a good opportunity for us, a really good opportunity.”

Mr. Swing told investigators he was serving a prison sentence for drug offenses and fled the scene because he panicked, the sheriff's office said. Mr. Swing, who posted $150,000 bail after his arrest, could not be reached at a number listed under his name, and it was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.

After the accident, Lochlan was flown by helicopter to a hospital and treated for his injuries. His injuries included a deep cut in his knee that required 15 staples to close.

He said he realized he had lost his AirPod when his girlfriend came to the scene of the accident and found his phone, watch, wallet and AirPod case with only one AirPod in it.

Lochlan said he opened the app on his phone to find out where the missing AirPod was and it showed an address about four miles away. The family called the sheriff's office, which arrested Mr. Swing at that address.

“It's really unbelievable,” said Lochlan's father Derek Nicol, adding: “People say it's karma. So maybe it's karma that it happened. It's just weird.”

Lochlan said he was concerned investigators might not be able to find the driver who struck him, but the sheriff's office said the search had been narrowed based on security camera footage of the silver SUV driving away from the scene of the crash.

“He could have hidden anywhere,” Lochlan said in an interview Tuesday, “and then it was like, 'Oh, my AirPod tracked him down right away.'”

Lochlan, who was not wearing a helmet when the crash occurred but had a light on his bike, said he was told it could take months for him to fully recover. Both he and his father said the accident, which occurred on the last day of his freshman year of high school, could have been much worse.

“He realized he was pretty lucky,” Nicol said. “He slowly realized he could have been killed.”

Susan C. Beachy made a research contribution.