He Reportedly Drove A Stolen Car To His Own Stolen Car Hearing

Ricard Otero showed up to court in a reportedly stolen car and got detained.
Authorities booked him on three charges, including driving while suspended.
It joins a long list of courtroom mistakes made by drivers already banned.

If you’ve got a court date looming, showing up is step one. Step two is not making things worse the moment you arrive. A 41-year-old man in Salinas, California, managed to miss that second part entirely, pulling into court in a stolen car while facing an auto theft case.

The bizarre scene unfolded on the morning of March 24, when members of California’s Multi-Agency Detail Combating Auto Theft, better known as MADCAT, spotted Ricardo Otero arriving for his hearing. He rolled into the Salinas Courthouse parking lot behind the wheel of a vehicle that had been reported stolen out of San Jose.

Read: Teen Already Busted Twice Hours Before Police Clocked Her At 125 MPH

Whether he forgot what he was driving or simply assumed no one would notice is anyone’s guess. Either way, it didn’t last long. As Road&Track reported, officers arrested him outside the courtroom, and he was quickly taken to the Monterey County Jail.

Writing on Facebook, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says he was booked on charges of unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle, commission of a felony while released on bail/own recognizance, and driving with a suspended license.

Zoom Court Driving Incident

If this all sounds a bit surreal, it is not the first time a case like this has surfaced. A similar incident from a couple of years ago has been making the rounds again on social media, and it is just as baffling.

In that case, a man named Corey Harris, with a suspended license in Ann Arbor, Michigan, appeared on a Zoom call with the court while behind the wheel of a car. In the video, the judge asked him out of astonishment if he’s driving, to which the man responds, “Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office actually,” and then proceeded to park his car, all while on a call with the court.

That explanation did not help his case. The judge promptly revoked his bond and ordered him to turn himself in to the local police station by 6 p.m. the same day. It later emerged that Harris had never held a valid driver’s license in the first place. The system listed it as suspended due to unpaid child support. Several months after that ill-timed court appearance, he finally obtained his first driver’s license.