You know that talk that every parent has with their child regarding things that they can and cannot have? It seems that one 5-year old boy from Utah didn’t react well to it – at all.
After arguing with his mother, the child managed to grab the keys to the family SUV, and left for California in order to buy a Lamborghini with just $3 in his pocket. Thankfully, a Utah Highway Patrol trooper spotted him on Interstate 15 and pulled him over.
Initially, the trooper thought he was dealing with an impaired driver, seen as how the SUV was weaving across multiple lanes. The vehicle was doing a little over 30 mph (48 km/h) at that time, which is suspiciously slow for an interstate.
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“When they found the vehicle, they thought ‘Oh yeah, this might be an impaired person’ and when the car pulled over, it even seemed more like this person might not know what they’re doing,” stated UHP Lt. Nick Street, adding that it was “luck” that the trooper saw the vehicle before anything worse could have happened.
Before being pulled over, the boy managed to drive the car from his home in the area of 17th Street and Lincoln Avenue to the I-15 South on-ramp at 21st Street, which is about a five minute drive, as reported by KSL.
We can only imagine how shocked the trooper must have been to discover that the person he had just pulled over wasn’t just a minor without a driver’s license, but a child whose head barely reached the headrest.
“He was sitting on the front edge of the seat so that he could reach the brake pedal to keep the car stopped while I was standing there,” said UHP trooper Rick Morgan, who pulled the boy over. “I helped him get the car into park, shut the vehicle down and then we started to look for means to contact his parents.”
When authorities contacted the boy’s parents, they received confirmation regarding his age, while also learning that a sibling was supposed to be watching the boy with both parents at work. Somehow, the former managed to grab the keys from a hook in the home, snuck out and drove away in an attempt to make his Lamborghini ownership dreams come true.
One of our Troopers in Weber Co. initiated a traffic stop on what he thought was an impaired driver. Turns out it was this young man, age 5, somehow made his way up onto the freeway in his parents’ car. Made it from 17th and Lincoln in Ogden down to the 25th St off-ramp SB I-15. pic.twitter.com/3aF1g22jRB
— Utah Highway Patrol (@UTHighwayPatrol) May 4, 2020
The parents went on to tell investigators that the boy had never driven a vehicle before and that they hadn’t had any issues like this one prior to this incident.
This could have gone so wrong
It’s almost a miracle that a 5-year old boy with no driving experience (not that other 5-year olds have any driving experience) managed to take a five minute drive from his home and onto an interstate without any incidents. However, as the trooper’s dashcam footage shows, the boy didn’t exactly have total control over the car, yet did have the presence of mind to pull over immediately after Morgan began initiating the stop.
While recalling the incident, Morgan said that the boy was upset and almost on the verge of tears, telling the trooper that he was on his way to his sister’s home in California, where he wanted to buy a Lamborghini – although a specific model wasn’t mentioned.
Of course, the $3 in his pocket wouldn’t have gone a long way in helping him purchase a car that typically costs north of $200,000.
“I have a son who just turned 6 and I can’t imagine him being able to figure out how to get behind the wheel or even having the want or willpower to be like ‘I’m going to California to buy a Lamborghini'”, added Lt. Nick Street.
“If you have a child that might be at high risk to grab the keys and get behind the wheel, you need to mitigate that by some degree by making sure the keys aren’t in an easily accessible place,” he concluded.
In the end, nobody was hurt and no property was believed to be damaged. However, the Weber County attorney’s office could still file charges against the parents if deemed appropriate.