At about midnight on a drizzly Friday night, I received a radio call that a car was spotted with the driver driving erratically. Of course, I’m thinking that I have a drunk driver. A few minutes later, I got another call that the car ran through a wire fence along the road, but was able to get back on the road and continue on.
As soon as I got in back of the car, I hit the siren for a few seconds hoping that the driver would stop, but instead, the driver sped up and we were doing about 70 mph on a back road, wet and the road was fairly straight for about 2 miles. We came to an ‘S’ curve where the driver lost control, went into a skid, hit a ditch as the driver left the road and rolled the car onto it’s roof.
I immediately called for a backup and an ambulance. When I got the person out of the car, I saw that he was about 13 or 14 years old. I thought he was a passenger, so I asked him where was the driver. He said that he was the driver. I later found out that he decided to take his mom’s car for a joyride. His parents had gone out for the evening and he was left alone. He said that he was bored. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt.
I had him transported to the hospital to be checked, but he was OK. I had the car towed to his home. The parents had been home for about a half hour before we got there. Mom and Dad weren’t happy. I told the boy and his parents that I could write him about $700.00 in fines, but just charged him with driving without a license.
During my career, I had a couple cases of underage driving, but this case was my favorite because no one was hurt and I had to admit, the kid was a pretty good driver.
