A Maryland man says his vacation to Arizona, where he was visiting family for a baby shower earlier this winter, turned into the worst experience of his life — one that could have left him dead.
A month later, he’s still demanding answers from an online rental car company that put him behind the wheel of a vehicle that had been reported stolen.
Jeff Addo, of Silver Spring, only found out the car he was renting through the Turo mobile app had been reported stolen when police in Glendale, Arizona, cornered him in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant and detained him and two close friends at gunpoint.
Now, police and Turo are both using words such as “unfortunate” to describe what happened. Addo repeatedly characterized the incident as “traumatizing.”
“Guns are on us,” Addo told WTOP. “So I’m like, ‘Alright, let’s move as slow as possible.’ So we’re asking, ‘What’s going on?'”
On Feb. 1, Addo and his friends were ordering food at a restaurant when body camera video released by police in Glendale shows officers holding them at gunpoint in the parking lot. As they’re put in handcuffs and walked into the back of police cruisers, Addo and his friends can be heard being fully cooperative, while asking officers what was going on.
A few minutes later they got an explanation.
“They finally tell us in the car that our car is stolen. And we’re like, ‘That doesn’t make sense, because we have the Turo agreement,'” Addo said. “The review on the car has 4.9 stars. So everything was good. So it’s not like we didn’t do our due diligence.”
Addo said it was the first time he’s ever been detained — much less had any run-in at all with police.
“I just thank God for our composure. Because if we were any type of combative in any way, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” Addo said. “People would be getting ready for an obituary or something like that.”
“That car’s a stolen vehicle,” a police officer can be seen explaining to Addo on the body camera video.
“Wow” was Addo’s response. “We have all the information you need.”
It also shows him getting his Miranda rights read to him, even as the officer made it clear that Addo wasn’t under arrest.
Addo’s friend was the one who rented the car through Turo earlier that day, and another body camera video shows him offering police permission to pull up the rental agreement on his phone. As an officer goes through his friend’s phone, Addo’s friend can be heard saying, “Whoever did this, is doing something to us. I had no idea about this.”
“We appreciate you being cool about it,” an officer is heard telling him.
“The police, obviously, they were doing their job,” Addo said, adding he felt that having guns pointed at him was excessive. “I personally feel like we weren’t threats to them, so I feel like the guns drawn — and once again, I get it, felony stops — but they knew in the first 5 minutes that we weren’t the guys that they’re looking for.”
Police in Glendale, Arizona, told WTOP in a statement, “This was an unfortunate situation that should have never happened. Our officers responded to a call for service for a reported stolen vehicle within our jurisdiction. At that time, a high-risk stop took place, and within 20 minutes’ time, our officers managed to sort out that this was a misunderstanding. These men had legitimately rented a vehicle in good faith not knowing that it had been reported stolen.”
But they also said the officers there followed protocol, and “conducted themselves with respect and represented this department well.” They also note that the officers drove the men back to the place they were staying.
Addo said the blame primarily falls on Turo and the host who rented his friends the car.
“You cannot put a stolen car that is on Turo, even if you reported it or not. I feel like if a car is stolen, we need to move on to a new car,” Addo said. “We don’t need to put no one in danger and risk the lives of civilians that gave you their hard-earned money to trust you, to use your car to ride around in a place that they don’t live.”
A Turo spokesperson agreed it never should have happened.
“Our terms of service prohibit hosts from sharing cars previously reported as stolen before they are removed from law enforcement databases as stolen. We’ve refunded the guest fully and are doing everything possible to reinforce our safety and communications protocols with our hosts because nothing matters more to us than keeping our guests safe,” Turo said in a statement to WTOP.
But, Turo also described it as an isolated incident, saying less than 0.10% of all Turo’s 27 million rentals have ended with a serious incident of any kind. The owner of the car that was never taken off the stolen car database has had their account suspended.
“People that rent cars, please be careful. This can also be you,” Addo said.
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