Thief steals car, runs out of gas, calls owner for money

Thief steals car, runs out of gas, calls owner for money

March 8, 2014 3:33 PM By Cora Van Olson


A thief in Norway deserves some sort of prize for executing the most ill-conceived car theft, possibly in history. He stole a car with no gas, no money, no license, and donning a reflective safety vest, called the owners for help.

The car’s owner, Anne Kristin Korsfur, runs a guest house in Norway. A young man staying there snatched the car keys one night when she wan’t looking and drove off in her Saab. The next morning, Korsfur noticed a missed call on her cell phone from the cell phone she and her husband, Johnny Henriksen, keep in the Saab. Curious, she called back, and spoke with her thief.

It seems that Henriksen had forgotten to gas up the car, and the thief almost immediately ran out of gas. He wanted to know where in the car he could find the credit card she used to pay for gas. Wisely, she pretended that he had called the wrong number, later explaining to the media, “I guessed that he had driven south, partly the night before he had asked Johnny how to get from Sørkjosen to Finnsnes, and quite right, I got no further than the turn that goes up Sørkjosfjellet when I saw our car standing by the roadside.”

Amusingly, the thief not only had the hazards on, but was wearing a reflective vest.

Korsfur had her husband notify police, and approached the thief, who did not recognize her from the night before. She offered to help him and kept him talking until police arrived. ”I was about to crack up in laughter the whole time. I had to try really hard to keep a straight face,” she later said.

When police arrived the unnamed suspect tried to pass himself off as her husband, but at that point she she straightened him out, ”I am the person who owns the car you are driving.”

He was arrested for car theft and driving without a license.