Man Reunited With Stolen Corolla 22 Years Later
The 1993 Toyota Corolla
Every year, thousands of cars are stolen, and many of those cars are never recovered. But sometimes, we hear a story about a driver reunited with his or her stolen car decades later, and it gives us hope. Today, that story is about a 1988 Toyota Corolla that was stolen in October 1993 in South Africa, and was brought back together with its owner a few weeks ago.
The car was actually found over seven months ago, but it took police a long time to find the original chassis and engine numbers, which had been scratched off. The owner, Derrick Goosen, was amazed when police contacted him to let him know his Corolla had been recovered. He praised Warrant Officer Kwakwa Ntokola from the Seshego Vehicle tracking unit, describing him as an “exemplary individual.”
Ntokola responded, “It’s my daily job to recover cars and call clients to collect their vehicles. It was not a big thing for me until the client… called the media. It was my daily routine.”
Ntokola recovered the vehicle during an operation and discovered that it had been tampered with. The car was then taken to the pound, where officers worked on it diligently until they found the original numbers and were able to match it to Goosen’s missing car report from 1993.
Police are still investigating to determine who the original thief was, but our guess is that Goosen is just happy to be reunited with his car, which was stolen just seven months after he first bought it.
News Source: News24
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