Stolen Car Driven Into Martin Road Lake

It seems like these are two rules of Amarillo:

1. Commit a Crime? Dump the evidence in Lawrence Lake

2. Steal a car? Dump it in Martin Road Lake.

So in this case of grand theft auto, guess where this stolen car ended up?

Okay, so it's no mystery that Amarillo has had a high rate of car theft, being rated as number 3 on a list by AAA for car theft. In 2020 Amarillo had a car theft rate of 365 cars stolen per 100,00 people. Although APD has made efforts in the past few years to limit the number of car thefts, it is inevitable that they will still occur in Amarillo. But last Friday, a car theft occurred that had a normal start and an odd ending.

Around 6:15 A.M. at an apartment complex on the 1600 block of Dale Savannah Ruiz, a mother of 4 came across a thief who had hotwired her SUV. She proceeded to chase the man with a baseball bat, and the thief drove off with the vehicle before she could stop him.

The thief did not make it far though. The genius of a car thief inside the hotwired SUV made their great escape across the street and into Martin Road Lake before fleeing the scene. 911 was called, emergency responders came to the scene and a tow truck was called to retrieve the sunken SUV. The thief could not be found and is still at large and the crime is still being investigated by the Panhandle Auto Burglary and Theft unit.