How much do you trust your roommate? Do you suspect they secretly eat stuff from your shelf of the fridge? Might they steal your car and drive it almost 1,000 kilometres to their home town just to show off? Ridiculous, right? But not altogether impossible, it turns out.
In the past few days, when a Mr. Zhang knocked off from work at a factory in Nanjing near to the town of Tangshan, he found his parking spot outside empty.
Zhang called the police and said his car had been stolen. Through access to surveillance footage, police soon found that the suspect was in fact the victim’s roommate, a Mr. Tian.
The police investigation found that Tian had taken advantage of his position at work to acquire the luxury red SUV’s keys and ¥1,000 in cash. In interviews, Tian admitted he had stolen the car and driven home just to show off.
Curiously, officer Jin Song of the Shangfeng Police Station in Nanjing’s Jiangning District said, “The victim reflected that he had in fact suspected for the past 6 years that Tian might one day attempt to steal the car in order to sell it”.
Police found that Tian had tendered his resignation at the factory where he worked, and then during office hours when Zhang, roommate and colleague, was also at work, stole his car keys and the ¥1,000 in cash.
With the suspect behind bars, police traced the stolen vehicle to Hunan Province, almost 1,000 kilometres from Nanjing. There they were able to recover the car, reveals The Paper in a video report utilising police officers’ body cams.
Speaking in custody to the police, when asked why he had driven the car back to his home, Tian simply said, “Just to show off”.
“Why use a friend’s car to show off?”, the police then asked.
“It’s good to have a friend who can lend you a car to drive home. Just for fun really.”
Tian currently remains in police detention on suspicion of theft.
