A woman’s vehicle nightmare went from bad to worse when police gave her a ticket for leaving her car running, a car that had been stolen from her moments earlier.
Michelle Toney was driving for a food delivery service when she pulled up to a Hickory Hill restaurant around 8 p.m. Sunday. She left her car running while she ran inside to grab an order. But she returned to find that a white Honda Accord had blocked her car in.
A masked man in all black runs from the driver side of that Honda, which was later determined to be stolen, jumps into her vehicle, and the two stolen cars speed off as Toney yells, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.”
“I got scared because I don’t know; I don’t know if he has a weapon, but I was just like, ‘Please, please, like, please just leave my car alone,'” Toney said.
Police found Toney’s car not far from the restaurant with a flat tire and slight damage.
“I literally found out, maybe it wasn’t long, maybe like within the next 30 minutes, that my car was down basically right down the street and abandoned in the parking lot,” Toney said.
But when Toney told officers that she left her car running outside the restaurant, they informed her that she was actually in violation of a Tennessee law that states, “No person driving or in charge of a motor vehicle shall permit it to stand unattended without first stopping the engine, locking the ignition, removing the key, and effectively setting the brake.”
Toney said the moment of terror, along with the citation, has taught her a valuable lesson. “It was a humbling experience because you always think it’ll never happen to you,” she said.
