On Monday, a police officer in the western US state of Utah pulled over a car en route to California. As the officer couldn't see the driver's face from his rear view mirror, he thought it was an impaired driver, only to find to his surprise that it was a five-year-old boy at the wheel.
Details of the incident
When the SUV was seen weaving across the freeway at 30 mph as other vehicles and trucks sped by, trooper Rick Morgan activated his siren following which the car stopped. He initially thought the car was being driven by an impaired driver. To his surprise, he found the five-yea-old boy driving it. "You're five years old?" he exclaimed, AFP reported. "Wow... Where did you learn how to drive a car?" he asked.
The boy told the trooper that he left home following an argument with his mother who refused to buy him a Lamborghini. So "he decided he'd take the car and go to California to buy one himself", the Utah Highway tweeted. "He might have been short on the purchase amount, as he only had $3 dollars in his wallet". Authorities didn't name the boy or the family and tweeted a picture of him in the driver's seat, but with his face blocked out.
The boy was able to drive for three-five kilometres from his home before he was stopped and his family contacted, according to a statement released on Tuesday. "He was sitting on the front edge of the seat so that he could reach the brake pedal to keep the car stopped while I was standing there", Morgan said in a statement, CNN reported.
"The family reported that the boy's older sibling was watching him that morning, the sibling fell asleep and the boy took the keys to the SUV off of a hook in their home". "Fortunately, no one was hurt and no property was found damaged during his short outing", the statement added.
