Kent Swanson said he had a “bad feeling” shortly after two men left his Lawrenceville dealership to take a pre-owned Pontiac Grand Prix for a spin earlier this week.
About 15 minutes after the pair left Monday afternoon, Swanson, owner of Swanson Auto Buying Service in Lawrenceville, said he received a call from one of the men asking whether the car had GPS installed.
Swanson said he knew right away that he’d been taken for a ride, and that the two men had gotten away with his $6,000 vehicle, dealer tag and all.
“You try to be trustful of people, but it’s getting to where you can’t trust anybody anymore,” Swanson said Thursday. “This is just something where I got caught off guard.”
South Carolina authorities identified the car theft suspects as Dameon Simpson, 34, and Kyle William Norris, 26, both escapees from a pre-release work detail outside Florence, S.C. After stealing an SUV at a cannery over the weekend, the two fled to Georgia and on the way stopped at Swanson’s dealership on Buford Drive.
S.C. Department of Corrections spokesman Clark Newsom told the AJC that Simpson was convicted of a hit and run in which no one was injured and was due to be released next year. He said Norris’ release was even sooner: within six months. Now both will face new charges and possibly more prison, the spokesman speculated.
Swanson, who has been a car dealer for 35 years, said he still couldn’t believe he allowed himself to be duped by the two suspects.
He said Simpson, who was doing all the talking, was “very smooth, very smooth. And I think back to our conversation and there were two or three times I could have stopped it,” the dealer said.
According to Swanson, Simpson said he’d totaled his vehicle and wanted to use the insurance money to get into another car. He wanted to take the 2004 Pontiac around the block to have a mechanic check it out.
Yet, he had no identification, and the dealer said there were also other red flags:
- The men pulled up in a 30-year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee with S.C. tags that looked like it was on its last leg;
- Norris jumped in the Cherokee to follow Simpson as he pulled off in the Pontiac.
- And there was the question about the GPS.
Swanson said that after he answered the GPS question, Simpson hung up. Swanson tried to call the number back but got no answer. He then looked the number up on the Internet and found out the call was made from a pay phone miles away in Buford, north of the Mall of Georgia.
Swanson said he immediately called the Lawrenceville Police Department to report the theft. He’d already written down the tag number of the Cherokee.
Police were able to identify the suspects because S.C. prison authorities had put out an alert that the pair may be headed toward Florida, where one of the suspects has family.
Swanson, however, said he believed they were headed back to South Carolina since the call was made north of the dealership, not south of it.
“I think they went right back North,” Swanson said Thursday.
Swanson said he received a call Thursday from Pageland, S.C., from a woman identifying herself as Simpson’s wife, who said the couple has three children and that she couldn’t understand why he would flee a pre-release program and risk more prison time.
“She just wanted to know what happened,” Swanson said. “I said, ‘Your husband just did something very stupid.’ "
Swanson said that after he found out the names of the suspects, he found their pictures on the Internet and knew right away they were the pair who took his vehicle.
“It definitely was them,” Swanson said.
The dealer said this was only the second time in the 35 years he’s been a car dealer that a vehicle was stolen right from under his nose.
“I will never, ever let anybody get in another vehicle if I can’t identify them,” he vowed.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
