Johnson County Sheriff’s deputies search a man’s car along State Road 37 in May 2019.
A routine oil change led to the discovery of a GPS tracker that was secretly placed on a vehicle — and the first charge of unlawful surveillance to be filed in Johnson County.
The tracker was found and reported to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office on July 31. This was only 30 days after Senate Enrolled Act 161 went into effect on July 1.
The law, authored by State Sens. Michael Crider, R- Greenfield, Michael Young, R-Indianapolis, and Ed Carbonneau, R-Valparaiso, makes it a Class A misdemeanor to secretly track people. That is elevated to a Level 6 felony if the person being charged has a history of domestic violence, stalking, or invasion of privacy, or if the person accused tracked someone who is under a protective order.
The law does not prohibit court-ordered tracking, the tracking of personal or business property or a parent or guardian tracking a minor child.
Known as “Millie’s Law,” it was inspired by the story of Millie Parke, a Hancock County woman who was attacked by her ex-boyfriend after he tracked her location using a GPS tracking device, according to media reports.
In this first case, a family member found the tracker under the rear bumper of a Trafalgar woman’s car while he was changing her oil. The tracker was inside a black metal box that was attached to the car using magnets, according to the probable cause affidavit filed Wednesday in Johnson County Superior Court 3.
The person charged Shane D. Eisenmenger, 25, of Nineveh, reportedly told police he placed the tracker on her car during the second week of July. The probable cause affidavit quotes him as saying “it was dumb” when he was asked why he did it.
The woman who was allegedly tracked told deputies she had never been in a relationship with Eisenmenger and she did not consent to being tracked, the affidavit says.
Tracking people using devices and apps is new and this is a case of the law meeting technology, said Lance Hamner, Johnson County prosecutor.
“Who thought when they were drafting the criminal code that people would invent something that could track a person for nefarious purposes — or any purpose,” Hamner said.
This type of crime is something that is not caught often, but the whole nature of the tracking is that people don’t notice the device, he said.
“The law must sometimes catch up with technology. Secretly tracking a girlfriend or neighbor wasn’t explicitly illegal until recently,” Hamner said. “There are many ways that sort of information could be used, but what they all have in common is that they’re terrifying to the person being tracked.”
The unlawful surveillance charge is a Class A misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to one year in jail. However, the crime can be a felony if a defendant has a prior conviction for unlawful surveillance, stalking, domestic violence or violation of a protective order.
Eisenmenger does not have a criminal history and the woman was not under a protective order, so he is charged with a Class A misdemeanor.
Eisenmenger has not been arrested and a warrant was not issued as of press time.
