Victim gets wake-up call after looking thief in eye

Ben Brown is miffed that the culprit was never caught. Picture / Richard Robinson

It is not often that one gets to look a car thief in the eye - at least not while he is in the process of stealing your car, but Aucklander Ben Brown has had that dubious pleasure.

Mr Brown was leaving work late in the central city one Sunday night in April when he heard a car revving.

"When I came downstairs, I saw my car reversing out of the garage."

Thinking fast, Mr Brown hit the button to close the garage door, then locked the thief in the garage as he ran upstairs to call police.

"He was bigger than me, and I didn't want to confront him.

"We looked each other in the eye, and that was a bit weird. You normally think of these people as faceless." By the time he returned, the thief was gone. So was his car, and the garage was "full of burned-tyre smell and exhaust fumes".

The $500 1984 Ford Laser may not have been worth a great deal, and wasn't the most secure of vehicles - Mr Brown could open it with a Foodtown card - "but it was still a good car that worked and got me from A to B".

Police recovered his vehicle in South Auckland, after the thief had rammed it into a pole.

"It would have been quite nice if he had just left it for me to pick up."

He sold the wreck to some schoolchildren for $35.

Mr Brown admits to feeling "a bit miffed" the thief was never caught. He has a new car - an upmarket Subaru Impreza - but losing his Ford has made him alert to crime.

"I am paranoid about locks and stuff like that," he said.

He says he was "a bit apathetic" about crime before the theft, but the loss of his car has woken him up to the fact there are less-than-honest people about.

"It does make you a bit more cautious when you park it."