A chaotic vehicle-theft-gone-wrong unfolded in a flash on Sunday morning, the loud scene waking up some Sherman Oaks residents and totaling at least one uninvolved, parked car.
The Los Angeles Police Department said officers responded to an 8:37 a.m. call for a vehicle theft in the 13000 block of Cumpston Street, where an unidentified man driving a tow truck had just attempted to steal someone’s pickup truck.
Dramatic surveillance footage captured the moment that the suspect driver, behind the wheel of a red and black tow truck, came careening around the corner of a residential street with a stolen, weakly attached gray pickup truck swinging off the tow truck bed.
After the tow truck messily skirts around the bend, the entire vehicle is seen tilting slightly outward, and the rear end of the gray pickup truck slides off the bed and slams into a white pickup truck that was parked on the side of the road. One neighbor who requested to remain anonymous told KTLA that the uninvolved, white pickup truck belonged to her father-in-law and said that his truck was totaled.
The loud crash did not deter the driver, however, and video goes on to show the suspect continue to drive, immediately then crashing the still-attached stolen pickup into a wooden power pole. This second hit is what seemed to finally tear the stolen truck off the suspect’s tow truck bed, which, even still, did not stop the suspect from continuing to flee.
As of Sunday afternoon, LAPD has not reported any arrests in connection with this incident and encourages anyone with further information to contact local law enforcement.
This was not the first time a tow truck has been used by a suspect to steal someone’s vehicle in Los Angeles County this year. In April, a woman’s black sedan was stolen from outside her Tarzana home by an unidentified suspect. Authorities eventually found it abandoned on the side of the 101 Freeway and, when the victim was finally reunited with her car, she found that it had been stripped of its parts.
