Driver detains teen girl until police arrive, after he says she stole and crashed his car
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — A driver in Belmont Cragin tracked his own car thief Monday – then held her down until police arrived.
As CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar reported Monday night, the owner of the car is able to track it using an app on his phone. When he saw that his car was on the move, he followed it – and it all ended with a young girl smashing into two parked cars, jumping the curb, and trying to make a run away.
“You just crashed my family car!” the driver, Victor Andrade, yelled at the girl. “I was at work!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the girl said.
That exchange was captured on cellphone video, which showed the seconds after a young girl jumped out of Andrade’s Honda CR-V. Police said she stole it.
“She tried, you know, running away,” Andrade said. “I tried to be careful with telling her that she needed to stay. She needed to be responsible.”
As heard in cellphone video, Andrade told the girl: “You’re going to pay for my car! I need your ID!”
“I don’t have my ID on me,” the girl said.
“I need something – your phone number, something,” Andrade said.
Andrade even tried calming her down by saying, “I know it’s scary right now, you know, that you’re going to get arrested, but you have to take responsibility.”
Andrade said he was in a meeting on the city’s Northwest Side and noticed on an app that his car was moving but he wasn’t behind the wheel.
He got in his brother’s car and followed for less than a mile. The Honda came speeding down an alley off the 6200 block of West Palmer Street.
The teen barely missed hitting a man working on his car, and ended up crashing against a fence. Pieces of the car covered the sidewalk.
“I would say he got very, very lucky that he didn’t get hurt,” Andrade said.
In the video, Andrade told the girl: “You know what you’ve done to me? This is my family car! Why would you steal my car?”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said.
Even though Andrade’s car is demolished and totaled, he has somehow already found compassion.
“It felt bad because, you know, she was a young girl,” he said. “She still has her whole life ahead of her.”
Andrade believes the teenager was able to start the car with a spare key that he leaves inside.
Andrade works maintenance for a number of buildings and he gets from job to job with that car. So he is now without one.
He has started a GoFundMe to help him with a new car.
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