A 52-year-old Darien man, seemingly grateful for finding a place to take a shower after his girlfriend kicked him out, agreed to drive his host’s SUV to pick up her daughter at school, according to police.
The daughter returned, police said, but not the vehicle.
Darien police gave this account (with accusations not proven in court, in part because there hasn’t been an arrest yet), based on what the car’s owner and her best friend told them:
The man is (or was, at the time) the boyfriend of the best friend of the victim. The victim had just moved to Darien and was cleaning her house when the man showed up on Thursday, saying he had slept in a parking lot overnight after his girlfriend had kicked him out of her place. The victim let him use the shower.
While she was cleaning and moving items around her new home, he began to help her. She asked him to pick up her daughter at school because the daughter’s sports practice was ending, and she agreed to let him take her 2004 Toyota Sequoia to do so. When the daughter arrived back home, the man drove off in the SUV — not part of the agreement, she said.
He didn’t have a cell phone, but the woman’s best friend said she knew he was on his way to Newark Airport and she was confident he’d return that night with the car. She convinced the victim not to report the theft to police at that point.
The man and the car never came back, and he didn’t get in touch with the victim.
The following day, Friday, the best friend was able to contact him. He was in Southhold, N.Y. (on Long Island). He said he’d take the ferry across Long Island Sound and return the car that night.
He didn’t.
The friend said she contacted Southhold police, who talked with the man (he was staying at a motel there). The girlfriend asked the victim to give the man a bit more time before reporting the car stolen. The victim gave him a bit more time.
By the next morning, Saturday, Dec. 19, time ran out at 11:30, when the victim and her best friend showed up at Police Headquarters to file a complaint and ask that police arrest the man.
The girlfriend was able to contact the man again and told him that the Sequoia had better be returned because it was about to be reported stolen. She was able to determine that he was staying at another motel in Riverhead, N.Y., at the eastern end of Long Island.
Darien police contacted police in Riverhead and told them where the man and the vehicle were, and that they had an arrest warrant for the man for previous misdemeanor charges. Riverhead police met with the man, got the vehicle’s keys from him and impounded the vehicle.
But they told Darien police they wouldn’t be arresting him on the Darien arrest warrant because the charges were only misdemeanors (an arrest warrant on new charges related to stealing the SUV would take more time for Darien police to complete and get a prosecutor’s and judge’s approval).
The victim said she would arrange to get her SUV back on Monday, four days after she gave the man her car keys.