Typically when we hear stories about people breaking into car dealerships, their goal was to steal cars and take off with them. A strange break-in case in Kentucky is a situation we’ve never heard of before: A man broke into a dealership, and rather than steal any of the cars, he decided to try and sell one of them.
The strange situation comes to us by way of Automotive News via Kentucky news outlets Bowling Green Daily News and NBC affiliate WNKY News. On the morning of October 18, police received calls about a suspicious person at R&M Auto Sales in Bowling Green. When police arrived, they found 34-year-old Dustin Cardwell. Upon being questioned, Cardwell told police he was the new owner of the dealership and that he had just purchased it “an hour ago.” That was a lie, of course.
When the actual owner of the dealership arrived, he checked the security cameras and saw that it appeared that Cardwell was getting ready to work:
The actual owner then showed up and found the building’s back window open. Security cameras had captured video of Cardwell taking keys and stacks of paperwork from inside before getting into a 2017 GMC Sierra, the report said.
But instead of taking off in the pickup, Cardwell told the officers he drove it to a nearby gas station and back.
Bowling Green Daily News says Cardwell was apparently going to sell the truck to a couple, though there were no details on who the couple was or how he convinced them to buy the truck. Cardwell was later arrested and charged with burglary, first-degree criminal mischief, no operators license and a reckless driving charge. Surveillance footage from the dealership shows him backing into a Dodge Dart on the lot before driving off to a gas station.