When two teenagers decided to steal a van, they made the worst possible start to their criminal careers.
They drove past a man who was six-foot-four and an off-duty law enforcer on the Gold Coast. He then apprehended the boys, who were aged 13 and 14, before the police arrived.
The boys reportedly cried out in fear as they waited to be handcuffed. One of them even said his mother was going to kill him.
The incident occurred on Boxing Day when Bradley Cowper, the head of an e-commerce company, saw the boys driving a van at speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour.
As he approached the vehicle, Mr. Cowper noticed that the teenagers inside were wearing Covid masks. He then realized that the car they were driving was stolen.
Since he had been a victim of car theft, Mr. Cowper decided to act immediately and open the door of the stolen vehicle.
According to Mr. Cowper, he tried to grab the driver out of the vehicle. However, he accidentally injured his hand when he reversed the car.
He was just lucky that the thieves didn’t run over his foot. He came across the same suspects again a couple of minutes later. The teenagers had apparently stopped the car and damaged it on the kerb.
The boys appeared stunned as Mr. Cowper approached them. They didn’t try to run away despite having a petrified expression on their faces. The six-foot-four businessman said his face was priceless, similar to what he had seen in a ghost.
To help him apprehend the suspects, Mr. Cowper called a couple of people to assist him. As they waited, one of them started begging for his life, while the other confessed that he had done something illegal.
He also apologized profusely and said that his mother was going to murder him. His neighbors came to check on the situation, and one of them was an off-duty police official.
The two boys were eventually apprehended by the police. A spokesperson for Queensland Police said that the teenagers had been charged for unlawful use of a vehicle.
The stolen vehicle was reportedly spotted on Thursday evening. The pair will face the Children’s Court of Queensland in the coming months.