(Updated at 3:30 p.m.) How quickly do you think your car would get stolen if you left it directly outside a 24-hour store, on the side of a busy Clarendon street, with the keys still in the door?
Try 90 seconds, according to a woman whose Mitsubishi Eclipse was stolen from outside the 7-Eleven at 3000 Washington Boulevard.
The woman, who we will call “Lucy,” said she and a companion were “in a big rush” when they ran into the store, leaving the keys hanging from the driver’s side door.
“Stupid move on our part, but it was freezing and we ran in for literally 90 seconds,” Lucy wrote in an email. “We were running late and it was a dumb mistake.”
Lucy came out of the store, saw that the car was gone and called the police. The police took a report, but have so far not been able to locate the stolen car.
“[The] good news is we’re fully insured and no one was hurt,” Lucy wrote. “Some valuables in the car, but all replaceable. No sighting by anyone on who stole the car as it probably just looked like an owner since they had the keys.”
Despite being the victim of a crime, Lucy has been able to find humor in the situation. She described her stolen two-door Mitsubishi as “a total s–t car” and noted that “we’re not upset about it… it’s actually sort of funny.”
Lucy added that she hopes others will learn from her dumb mistake.
“We just let our guard down living in the bubble of safe Arlington and want to send out a warning for others,” she wrote. “We’re city folk and only recently joined the more suburban scene (and love it). But, this was a reminder to not be idiots since crime can happen anywhere.”