Oh, the tale of a Lamborghini thief in Los Angeles reads like a script straight out of a Hollywood action movie, except this time, the bad guy doesn’t get away. With a need for speed that would make even Dominic Toretto shake his head in disbelief, our not-so-bright protagonist decided that fleeing the cops at more than 100 miles per hour was a grand idea. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Stealing a car is one thing, but hijacking a Lamborghini and thinking you can outdrive the police? That’s next-level foolishness. This thief, a 51-year-old Los Angeleno named Elliott Dugan, clearly slept through physics class because he seemed to underestimate just how much power these supercars pack. The kind of power that demands respect, or at least a basic understanding of how not to turn yourself into a human cannonball.
The drama unfolded in April, but like a fine wine or a delayed justice, the footage only recently hit the internet, giving us all front-row seats to this tragic comedy. According to FOX News, our ill-fated car thief was found asleep at the wheel (first sign this wasn’t going to end well), behind the roaring engine of a stolen Lamborghini. When the Los Angeles police attempted to wake him up for a little chat – because, you know, sleeping in a stolen vehicle in the middle of the road isn’t exactly normal – Mr. Dugan decided that cooperation was overrated.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” an officer asked, to which Dugan probably should have said, “Because I made a series of poor life choices leading up to this moment”? Instead, he denied the car was stolen, claimed he had rented it, and then, when asked to step out of the vehicle, chose the gas pedal as his form of reply.
What happened next is something straight out of a physics lesson on what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Except, in this case, the unstoppable force was a Lamborghini hurtling down the street at breakneck speeds, and the immovable object was, well, reality. Dugan crashed the vehicle, totaling it, and was thrown hundreds of feet from the wreck. He died at the scene, cementing his legacy as a cautionary tale of what not to do when you’re behind the wheel of a car that’s not yours.
That’s one guy who won’t be stealing any more cars, indeed. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that high-speed chases in stolen supercars only lead to one destination: disaster. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a good idea to think twice before attempting to play fast and furious in real life. Because unlike in the movies, there’s no sequel for Mr. Dugan.