My Car Was Stolen and Used in the Attempted Murder of a Police Officer
If someone you know steals your car -- and the car happens to be filled with your most important stuff... And then your car almost clips a cop...You're gonna need to do a fundraiser.
Now they needed to find the driver, the cop said. And arrest her for attempted murder.
LAKE STEVENS — The car turned up in Steilacoom (suburban Tacoma), six days after she stole it out of my Lake Stevens garage.
“You know it’s not driveable right? They told you it’s not driveable,” the detective declared.
I say nothing.
The Type of Laugh You Don’t Wanna Hear
You generally don’t expect to get your car stolen by someone you know.
And if you do, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll spend days upon days texting and voice memo’ing the hell out of her, attempting every tactic possible in an attempt to get the car back.
But all you’ll get a is a sparse extremely unfunny laugh.
The type of laugh you don’t wanna hear from someone who knows they can ruin you or save you…
Totally depending on their whim.
You don’t generally imagine that the person who stole your car also stole your guns.
But the EDC you store in the glove box (Glock 43x 9mm MOS with Shield red dot optic) is gone.
And the Glock 20 (10mm) with its KRISS Vector mag made for shooting Larry Bird numbers?
Nowhere to be found.
Your new Oakley shades are gone. Third pair this year, after a six year run of not losing any shades. What happened Kev?
And they stole your wallet. Which has your Real ID.
And your DJI Mini 3 Drone… and controller are gone.
Brace yourself. You think she saved anything for you? (She laughs that cold laugh.)
Your beloved FUJIFILM camera is gone.
The underrated Fuji 50-200 mm zoom you sourced outta Kenmore is gone.
The great kit lens and the Peak Design camera bag stuffed with. high end memory cards, extra batteries and a 1 TB HDD flash drive? Gone,
And honestly it’s best that you couldn’t have imagined any of this occurring.
Because what a hell you’d be in… if you just thought this sorta thing up organically, amiright?
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I Was Actually Feeling Pretty Good About Things
Like we talked about up top, the car turned up in Steilacoom six days after she stole it out of my garage.
Officer Dustin Hulbrock with the Steilacoom boys in blue found it Fathers Day afternoon and he gave me a call as he approached.
He lets me know that my 2015 BMW M235ix …that was reported stolen Friday was spotted at a waterfront park in Steilacoom.
In a public beach parking lot. On a warm Fathers Day evening. The girl touched 75. By the time she hit the side streets of Lakewood she topped 110 mph.
Hulbrock and his partner watched online as the stolen BMW cleared a nearby intersection and arrived at the park an hour earlier.
A slim, short light skinned girl hopped out of the drivers seat. Three dudes folded themselves outta the rest of the coupe.
So that’s how it was… as the sun set on Father’s Day…that I was actually feeling pretty good about things.
My car had been found after all — and that wasn’t a given. Better yet, Hulbrock relayed that he saw no obvious problems with the body or interior.
And then he abruptly cut off. “There she is.”
“Gotta go,” Hulbrock said, “Call ya in a few.”
“I’m So Sorry Bro.”
An hour and twenty minutes later, hearing nothing, I called Steilacoom PD. Once, twice. Nada.
Eventually Hulbrock calls back.
“I’m so sorry bro.”
You don’t generally imagine that a girl you know is gonna steal your car. out of your garage.
Or that your car will be chock full of your best tools and weapons when stolen.
You dont imagine that said girl will refuse to give you a clear answer to any question for days on end.
You pepper her with charm, anger, reasoning, fantasy.
Surely she’s gonna give it back right?
“Give it back and you won’t be charged,” I text her. And I mean it.
“Hah charged for what? I don’t have your stupid car,” she spews.
I run her utterance through the Thieving Miscreant-to-American English translator.
It comes out as “I have your car.”
“We Had Her Hemmed In. At Least I Thought We Did.”
But this time she’d told the truth, the first time. Halle-effin-llujah. The thief really didn’t have it.
But that’s because she’d given it to the girl in Steilacoom, who had my car now.
And the girl in Steilacoom, who we’ll soon learn isn’t about to be taken alive….she just slipped through the pair of deputies who sought her on foot… making it back to the M235's spot in the parking lot, auto doors clicking open as she reached proximity…throaty straight six growling after she sparked the ignition button.
“We had her hemmed in,” Hulbrock told me on the phone. “At least I thought we did,” he trailed off.
The young woman driving my stolen car wasn’t about to be taken into custody at the beach on this bucolic Fathers Day evening.
“I thought she was gonna get me,” Hulbrock said. “She drove right at me.”
The officer dodged a direct, possibly fatal impact and absorbed a glancing blow from the 320 horsepower German rocket.
Picking himself up off the blacktop, Hulbrock had raced for his patrol car as the girl jammed the accelerator through the floor …and the BMW accelerated at a pace commensurate with its sub-four second 0-60 time.
In a public beach parking lot. On a warm Fathers Day evening. The girl touched 75. By the time she hit the side streets of Lakewood she topped 110 mph.
“She Got Away”
The Steilacoom cops, mindful of the Sunday afternoon family-out-for-Fathers-Day vibe…and likely memo’d on the spate of fatal high speed chases that have ended up splatted on walls and jersey barriers around Pierce County this year…had to call off the chase.
“So sorry dude. She got away.”
“That car was fast,”Hulbrock muttered…before remembering it was actually my car. “That car was fast…as you know.”
“So anyway,” I begin. Lame AF.
“So we’re gonna keep looking, but she is out of our jurisdiction now,” Hulbrock said. “So…”
“We found it. We found your car.”
Three hours later my phone rang. Hulbrock again.
“We found it. We found your car.”
The nice guy that he is, Officer Hulbrock was happy for me. Like legitimately happy.
Evidently, he and his partner had stewed over the car that got away for the entirety of their shift. It honestly seemed to me like Hulbrock was more upset that he didn’t detain the car and driver the first try than he was that the driver had tried to run him down.
But at the end of the night?
The black beamer M class had shown up on location. And Hulbrock and his partner took possession of my car and arranged for it to be towed to their station.
Now they just needed to find the driver, Hulbrock said.
And arrest her for attempted murder.
You’re aware that the car isn’t driveable right?
If a girl you know steals your car, you probably don’t think she’ll keep it for long.
But she will.
She’ll keep it for a week while messing with you over message.
She’ll clean out your possessions and all visible traces of her…and then she’ll call a cousin or a buddy in Lakewood…and if you’re watching traffic cams in Renton early Sunday morning, you’ll seen a charcoal two door BMW coupe rocketing its way south outta Renton.
“This is Greg, I’m the Detective assigned,” the voice stated, leaving some room for a noun to be named later.
“You’re aware that the car isn’t driveable right? The officers let you know that the rear axle snapped?”
This was news to me. Bad news.
(Cut to a ticker tracking the real time increase in the National Debt.)
“And we’re gonna hold on to her for a little while. Just until we get this case squared away. Gotta get a warrant (Hey it’s my car, I can just give you permission)…
“I like where your head’s at but I can’t cut corners,” Greg says, “Gotta get a forensic expert…and a tech guy…”
You go to bed last Tuesday and everything seems ok
And that’s really where things stand today. My car sits in Steilacoom (Tacoma).
Stripped to the frame of personal belongings.
Rear axle snapped.
Seized by a judge as evidence in the case against one of the drivers.
Even if the car is released from evidence any time soon, it’s gonna be an expensive repair.
And in the meantime, the tools used to do this work are gone.
You go to bed last Tuesday and everything seems ok. Sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 am Wednesday, my BMW M235ix shot up my driveway, turned left on Vernon and headed south towards Kent, leaving behind its rightful owner.
In the time that’s ensued, new and very disturbing realities have entered the frame.
Someone you know might steal your car. And keep it from you as you search for them.
And go through all your belongings (well, they aren’t “yours” anymore are they?)’’.
And then — instead of returning the car to you —they hand it off to someone else.
And that someone else tries to murder a cop with your car, then cracks the wheel right off of the axle while doing 120 mph on a high speed chase… on Father’s Day.
(The car is not driveable.)
It’s definitely not what you imagined. It’s more like a waking nightmare. But.
They’re just things. (A lot of em.) And things can be replaced. (At great cost.)
But the feeling you had before you knew this was possible?
That’s never coming back.
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