It’s not uncommon that someone will have accidentally stolen something in their life — a chocolate bar or drink that you forgot to pay for and didn’t realize until you got home, for instance.
However, one man has recounted a story of how he accidentally stole something a little more substantial.
One man took to Reddit to explain how he once accidentally stole a car.
Yes, the man claims that he completely innocently, got into a car that wasn’t his and before long realized he had inadvertently wandered into a life of crime.
The man explained that the accidental theft was due to a lack of sleep and unbelievably coincidental circumstances.
However, as unlikely as it may seem, the man’s story seems to check out. It started as such:
“I accidentally stole a car. I had just gotten off work, I was working two jobs at the time and I got barely any sleep. I walked out and got into my car, started it up, and started driving home.”
However, when he got in the car, the sleep-deprived man began to notice that the car he was in wasn’t his.
The man’s curiosity was piqued when he couldn’t find the aux lead in what he thought was his own car:
“I didn’t realize something was wrong until I couldn’t find my AUX cord, and then I started realizing that there were things in the car that were not mine. Like the child seat in the back. I was an 18 year old with no kids. I flip a u-turn and bust my butt back to work to hopefully get the car back before its owner notices its gone.”
Sadly, he had not managed to get back before the car was reported stolen.
The police were already there when the inadvertent criminal returned and were naturally skeptical of the story. The police arrested and questioned him further about the incident.
As ludicrously unlikely as the man’s story may have seemed to the police, the idea of him returning so blatantly to the scene of the crime would require such a staggering payload of idiocy that it would be hard to imagine that they would believe he intentionally stole the vehicle. However, there are people capable of such idiocy.
The police eventually released him after the completion of three tasks.
Firstly, the man had to prove that his car was the same, “I showed my keys unlocked and started her car. Then pointed to my car which was the same model, color, and year.”
Then, he had one of his fellow employees to vouch for him, “one of my co-workers vouched for the fact that the customer parked in the spot I almost always parked in”.
Finally, he had the police review the CCTV footage from the past week.
“Camera footage was pulled for the past 9 days I had worked showing that 7 of those days I parked in that spot and the other 2 I parked close to it.”
After all of this, the police were satisfied that the man had not intentionally stolen the car and let him go on his way.
There were many responses expressing anger at the police for the way they handled the situation.
People were furious about the fact that the police made the man provide so much evidence for something that was clearly an honest mistake, with one person writing:
“How did they not drop charges after you brought it back? Same car, plus bringing it back is proof enough that it was an honest mistake. That guy sounds like a dick for making you dig up footage plus a witness”.
However, the original man leapt to the police’s defense, saying that they were only doing their job.
The man also explained that a single mother had owned the car; so for her, the fact of not having a car for so long or losing gas to a joyrider could have been very damaging:
“The cops were doing their job and were polite about it because I cooperated. And the owner was right to be angry. I was a punk kid who in her eyes had just stolen her car. Or at least took it out for a joy ride. The owner was a single mother and wasting any of her gas could’ve meant bad things.”
For a man who was put through so much for such a straightforward mix-up, he really is exceptionally calm about the whole affair.
A lot of other people shared similar experiences, revealing that accidental car thefts may happen more than you think!
A lot of people have experienced such an occurrence as it turns out, with key fobs sometimes allowing you access to cars of the same make of your own.
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Apparently, Saturn’s were the main offender for this sort of behavior, with one person writing, “Saturn’s were horrible for this!”
Another person explained their own experience as such: “Yup, [I] ‘stole’ another lady’s red Saturn Vue when I took my grandmas to the grocery store. Luckily I noticed quickly and no one was the wiser. It’s insane that it’s common practice for Keys and fobs to work on similar cars”.
Hopefully, this story doesn’t go giving people any ideas!
With this sort of mix-up being such an apparently common thing, I don’t think I’ll be able to get in my car without thoroughly surveying it through the windows first from now on — although, if people see me staring through car windows, I may end up getting arrested for trying to steal my own car anyway.
h/t: Reddit