Thirty bucks for a car – what a steal!
That’s because the car was, in fact, stolen by a pint-sized perp in Michigan who had gone on a crime spree worthy of the video game Grand Theft Auto, according to police.
Officers from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department caught the 12-year-old suspect red-handed as he was breaking into cars in Pontiac Saturday, according to a statement released by Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
“Through their investigation, detectives learned the boy had taken three or four vehicles over the past month, selling at least one of them for $30,” Oakland County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
It is unclear if the person who purchased the stolen car for thirty bucks was arrested as well.
The boy was arrested in the former home of General Motors, which made a line of cars of the same name.
Detectives had been trying to crack the case for weeks, according to WCRZ. There had been a rash of stolen cars in the area, with four stolen from one business alone, police said.
Investigators from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department had set up a stakeout at one parking lot on June 28 and waited, police said.
They caught the tween terror breaking into a car. He had a license plate on him when he was caught, according to the statement.
“The suspect entered numerous vehicles in the parking lot and when he was stopped and apprehended, he was carrying a license plate,” the statement said.
Bouchard said he is optimistic that since the boy’s brush with the law came so early in his life, he still has a chance to change the road he is on.
“This young man is on a very bad path, attempting to live his own grand theft auto,” Bouchard said in the news release. “Hopefully intervention by the courts will send him on a better life path as well as stopping the constant theft from this business.”
The boy is being held in Oakland County Children’s Village, and the case remains under investigation, according to police.
Like Motor City, a 30 minute drive away, Pontiac went from an industrial powerhouse in its heyday to a city in steep decline, a ghost town after the collapse of the American automobile industry in the 1970s and the shuttering of all the city’s factories.
In recent years, violent crime in Pontiac has gone down, but it is still much higher compared to other cities of similar sizes.
