Posted on 01/14/2010 1:05:08 PM PST by SmithL
Isabel Luevano was late with her car payment.
On Tuesday night, the repo man came.
Trouble was, when he snatched back her 2000 Honda Accord, her 2-year-old son, Cyrus Lopez, was repossessed, too. He was asleep in the back seat.
Frantic, Luevano called 911. She thought the car — and her child — had been stolen right before her eyes as she stepped outside to pick up her 6-year-old daughter.
Police swarmed to her rescue. A search helicopter circled in the air.
And 31 minutes later, San Jose police found the boy after astutely figuring out they should call Alberto's Auto Sales on East Santa Clara Street. When they did, they discovered that little Cyrus was in the dealer's lobby, his eyelashes stuck together in clumps because he had been crying so hard.
"It was a nightmare," Luevano told the Mercury News. "I thought I was losing my mind. I kept thinking, 'Who hates me enough to take my son?' I was freaking out."
Wednesday, Cyrus stayed home from day care to stay close to Mom.
San Jose police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said the car dealership owner, Alberto Luna, 47, said he discovered a boy in the back seat of the car he had repossessed just about the same time police were calling his son, Jose Luna, 23, at the dealership to alert them he had driven off with a toddler. The two promptly admitted they had the boy.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office is looking into what happened. But to arrest Advertisement on kidnapping charges, Lopez said, police have to show there was intent.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
So why did the mom leave the rug rat in the car she should be arrested for child abuse
Wow!
What happened?
She didn’t pay her car loan OR her pediatrician’s bill?
Golly, that's never happened before.
Shhh, you're ruing a good story.. Ain't those repo men just horrible ??
The bigger question is, who the hell finances a 10-year-old car?
Need to get Dog the Bounty hunter on this, maybe it could be a reality show with that disfuntional father of Sarah Palin’s grandson
The life of a Repo Man is always intense.
Sounds like both the repo men and the mother will be in some trouble over this by the time the story is done. You never leave a child unattended in a car even for half a second for any reason!
People with terrible credit and little cash.
It's a common practice in poor communities for a local wheeler-dealer to fix up and "sell" klunkers for $100 down and so much per month.
If the car breaks down the "owner" calls the car dealer and tells him where to pick it up (and stops paying for it).
Frequently someone will need a car for only a short period of time and the downpayment plus monthly will be far less costly than any comparable rental. They'll see one of these dealers, pick up a car, drive it for the purposes they had in mind, then stop paying.
I'm just describing the practice, but I think it has a bit to do with zoning permits for commercial garages, automobile property and casualty insurance, the true cost of ownership to "the poor", and the benefits of shifting titles to evade unnecessarily harsh encounters with agencies that regulate automobile rental companies.
It's been a number of decades ago when I was let in on the secrets of this business by a couple of graduate students from Angola (a country in Africa). They needed a car for 6 weeks so they went to Indianapolis one weekend to "buy one", and did so.
At the end of the semester they got their degrees and went back home. The repo guy presumably picked up the car.
One of the students said "America is the greatest country in the world. A black man without any resources and no credit rating of any kind can buy a car."
Sounds like the repo guys were following her and waiting for her to get out of the car. When she stopped to pick up her daughter (probably at school), they struck.
I’m sure he didn’t take it on purpose with the kid in it...
Well from the sound of it, he followed her and snatched the car when she stepped out. Charge him with kidnapping cause that IS what he did.
They should always check out a car to see if anything is in it. Sorry, but if I was the judge, he would be doing time.
I am not excusing the mother, by the way. But, not making a car payment does not excuse snatching her child and that is exactly what they did. You try it and you WILL be in jail.
There’s a lot of money to be made in poverty...
She wanted the repo man to alert her to the taking
It’s ordinarily the case that the people into selling clunkers make sure this doesn’t happen by first notifying the miscreant that “time’s up”. After all, these people will be repeat business in the future so you don’t want to get them all upset and nasty.
I wouldn’t come down too hard on the repo man. They only wanted the car, not the kid.
What if they had found him in the middle of repossessing - what’s their option, drop the kid on the sidewalk and hope he gets found - that’s true reckless endangerment or abandonment, and they’re in even worse trouble. I don’t think they had a whole lot of choice.
As the article says, for a crime to be committed there must be criminal intent.
I’ve read of people getting into a car identical to theirs and driving away. The key happened to work.
They didn’t commit grand theft auto because there was no intent to steal.
In this case they were apparently legally repoing the car and were unaware the child was in it. No criminal intent, no crime.
Glad the kid is ok.
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