Concord Car Salesman Recalls Wild Test Drive By Accused Kidnapper
CONCORD (KPIX 5) – An East Bay car salesman is shaken up after he went on the ride of his life. He said a customer who was looking for a van commandeered the vehicle during a test drive and kidnapped him.
"He was going 85, 90 and then he started swerving and we actually sideswiped a car. The whole time I was like, oh my God," said Christopher Reeves, a salesperson at Lehmer's Buick GMC in Concord.
The 23-year-old told KPIX 5, "He like grabbed my shirt…pushed me in the door and said I'm not f-in playing around."
According to the salesman, the man walked into the dealership wanting to buy a van. So the two went on what seemed like a routine test drive. They even stopped at the suspect's home to show his family the van.
Reeves said it was on the way back to the dealership that things got off track. The suspect told Reeves he was stealing the van and kidnapping him.
"I was like, oh my God. I don't want to get held somewhere and tied up," Reeves recalled.
When they came to a red light, Reeves said he reached for the door to escape. "He looked at me and said, 'If you say anything about this, I'm going to come back and kill you.'"
The suspect sped off and Reeves called his boss, who called police.
Inside the stolen car was a valuable tracking device that connected police directly to the car's location and then they were able to track down the suspect.
"The van has OnStar, so it's kind of ridiculous," said dealership manager Peter Benjamin. "And we have his driver's license, so he wasn't a brain scientist."
Police said the suspect crashed into a few vehicles on his high-speed getaway, and ended up on the side of the road when they tracked him down in Antioch.
The suspect's name has not been released.
