He took a BMW for a ‘test drive’ and ended up in jail

The white BMW 750Li caught his eye. It was a 2015 model and it was sitting on the lot at BMW of Macon on Riverside Drive the afternoon of Jan. 19. The guy who liked it, a 34-year-old from Stone Mountain, told a salesman that he was looking to buy a car for his wife. The salesman fetched the key to the car and let the customer see the $64,000 sedan up close. The customer then asked if he could back the car from its parking space and take a picture to send to his wife. Sure, the salesman told him. That’s when the customer, according to a Bibb County sheriff’s report, “backed the vehicle out of the parking space but then continued out of … the lot onto Riverside Drive and then … onto I-75 North.” Someone at the dealership called the cops and a lookout was posted for the car. A BMW tracking system helped authorities find it, and a Monroe County sheriff’s deputy pulled the car over north of Forsyth on Johnstonville Road. The guy who’d driven off in it told the cops that he had been given permission to take a test drive, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case. He was jailed on a theft charge.

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 8:00 AM with the headline "He took a BMW for a ‘test drive’ and ended up in jail."