A pickup truck planted by police to catch car thieves ended up parked in an Arlington man's living room early Monday morning.
Tim Black said he was awakened at about 3 a.m. when the truck plowed into his home.
"I was sound asleep and just heard a big -- you know, it didn't sound like a crash, it sounded like a bang, like something blew up," he said. "I rolled right out of bed and came running into the living room and, of course, that's when I found the truck."
Police had parked the pickup truck a few miles away as part of the Auto Theft Tracking Program. The car thief crashed into Black's home minutes after stealing it, police said.
In the bait car program, police plant vehicles in locations where they have a high probability of being stolen.
Once a thief breaks into the vehicle and begins driving it, police are electronically notified. Officers can then track the location of the vehicle. Once they find it, they can hit a kill switch, disabling the vehicle and locking the thief in the vehicle.
The program has yielded more than 700 arrests in Tarrant County since its inception in 2006.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
But the person who stole the truck that hit Black's home fled the scene and is still on the loose.
"By the time I had gotten to the truck, the person that was driving it had already taken off," Black said.
Black said considers himself lucky, despite the damage to his home.
"Of course, it's hard to feel that way with a hole in your house," he said.
Black, a fifth-grade science teacher, said he also will get some use out of the painful situation.
"I can use this as a lesson for my students. We're studying physical science. I can tell them about what happened to my house here while teaching them about the laws of motion," he said with a laugh.
