- April 26, 2024
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In order to save his car from being stolen last week, Dave Brooks performed action movie-like theatrics — for 30 seconds, anyway.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
He was a little sore a few days after — a couple scrapes and scratches — but that’s to be expected after jumping onto a moving car’s hood and being dragged — shoes scraping blacktop — from its door handle.
All in all, he knows that he was lucky.
The Ormond Beach Observer’s circulation manager, Dave Brooks, was making his rounds Wednesday, Aug. 7, he says, when he turned back to toward his car in the Frappes North parking lot to see a kid, no older than 16, jump into his front seat.
“I had left my car running — which I shouldn’t be doing, so one might say I was inviting the trouble,” Brooks said. “But with all the stops I regularly make each week, I’d be going through starters every couple of months if I shut off the car every time I got out to drop off or pick up papers for 30-60 seconds.”
In the future, he says, he’ll carry two sets of keys: one to keep in the ignition and another to lock up.
The kid jumped behind the wheel with Brooks just feet away. And almost before Brooks could tell him to get out, the door was slammed shut and the car was thrown into reverse. Brooks grabbed for the door, but it was locked.
“When he hit the accelerator, I kept hanging on to the door handle,” Brooks said. “He dragged me across Granada (Boulevard) in reverse, hitting the grassy median and bouncing over it.”
That’s when the door handle broke off. Brooks fell to the ground. But he didn’t stay down long
“While he was trying to put it into drive and speed off, I got up and jumped onto the hood of the car, letting him know that whereever he went, I was coming, too,” he said.
The robber then jumped out of the cab, leaving the car in Drive, and started running.
Brooks jumped off the hood, the car still in motion, jumped into the cab and then put his car in Park.
The whole ordeal lasted about 30 seconds, Brooks said. And then the kid was gone.
The door handle is going to cost about $375 to replace. And when police arrived, Brooks says he got “chewed out" for not being more passive, being more safe.
“They said he could have had a weapon, or he could have run over me, or caused an accident that I would have been exposed in the middle of,” Brooks said of the conversation he had with cops after the incident. “But all I could think of at the time was, ‘No way this kid is getting my car. It just wasn't going to happen. Period.’ ”
There were about 10 witnesses there and, soon, an ambulance arrived. But Brooks waved it away, he says.
“I've felt more beaten up after a good basketball game,” he said. “I am fine — and I still have my car.”
