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

Lochlan Nicol, 15, of Jensen Beach, Fla., was riding his bike to a gas station and convenience store near his home to buy ice cream last week when a driver heading in the opposite direction rear-ended. suddenly turned toward the station and hit it, he said.

It was around 10:30 p.m. on May 22 and Lochlan was hit so hard that his head crashed through the rear passenger side window, breaking his nose, cheekbone and eye socket, and knocking him unconscious.

The driver pulled Lochlan off the road, left him outside the gas station, then drove off, according to Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder.

What the driver didn't know was that he had left with a tracking device – the AirPod that Lochlan was wearing, which had been ripped from his ear and lodged under a floor mat at the inside the car, Sheriff Snyder said.

Using the AirPod's 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 at the scene of a accident with serious bodily injury, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

“It was this earpiece that made it possible to geolocate 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 with a broken rear passenger window, the sheriff's office said.

“It was just a fluke,” Sheriff Snyder said in an interview Tuesday. “There is no moral in this story. It was one of those things. It was a good break for us, a real good break.

Mr. Swing told investigators that he had served time in prison for drug charges and fled the scene because he began to panic, the sheriff's office said. Mr. Swing, who posted $150,000 bail after his arrest, could not be reached at the number listed under his name, and it was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.

After the accident, Lochlan was airlifted to hospital and treated for his injuries, which also included a deep gash to his knee that required 15 staples to close.

He said he realized he had lost his AirPod after his girlfriend went to the accident scene and found his phone, watch, wallet and AirPod case with a single AirPod inside .

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

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

Lochlan said he feared investigators would not find the driver who hit him, although the sheriff's office said it narrowed the search based on security camera footage of the silver sport utility vehicle that left places.

“He could have been hiding anywhere,” Lochlan said in an interview Tuesday, “and then it was like, 'Oh, my AirPod just found him right there.'”

Lochlan, who was not wearing a helmet when he was struck but had a light on his bike, said he was told it could be months before he was fully healed. 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 very lucky,” Mr Nicol said. “We are beginning to understand that he could have been killed.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed to the research.