A 10-year-old boy stole his father’s Toyota Avalon and raced it down the highway before getting trapped in a ditch by police.
After the boy drove off the road and along a ditch to avoid police, they didn’t let him get back on the road. One trooper asked another if he could hit the car.
“Can you advise on intentional contact to stop him?” a trooper said through the radio, via dash cam footage.
“One car as gently as possible,” answered the other trooper, presumably a supervisor.
But the contact needed was indeed minimal. The boy eventually hit a sign on the road’s edge before police bumped his vehicle and trapped it. Law enforcement then rushed to get him out of the car. The boy was arrested without injury, but was combative with police. He spit on troopers and kicked one in the chin. His family said he thinks it is all a joke.
“He thinks everything is funny,” said Christopher Hampton, the boy’s father, to ABC News 5. “He thinks because he got away with it the first time, they ain’t going to do nothing to him this time.”
Hampton recalled in last last week’s incident, his son stole his mother’s Dodge Charger. He was found later that day on Interstate 90 with three flat tires.
The family thinks the boy was motivated to steal cars from playing video games, like those in the “Grand Theft Auto” series.
“I told him, he could’ve hurt somebody, he could’ve hurt himself, or he could’ve been killed, he could’ve killed somebody else … and you knew you were wrong. Everything you do is not a joke,” said Hampton.
