A 65-year-old woman drove about 60 km with a car identical to hers without realizing she had mistakenly taken someone else’s vehicle.
The incident took place in Mafra, in the northern region of Santa Catarina, Brazil. According to a report by g1, the mix-up happened when the elderly woman left a restaurant and got into a white Jeep Compass that was parked at the establishment.
However, the car she took belonged to someone else. Alessandro Lemos de Souza, the owner of the vehicle that was taken, told g1 that the woman only realized the mistake in São Bento do Sul, 60 km from Mafra, when the police contacted her.
About two hours later, the vehicle was returned. According to the Military Police of Santa Catarina, the suspicion of theft was ruled out because the owner of the taken car had left the key inside the vehicle, so the case was treated as a simple misunderstanding.
“When she left the restaurant, she pressed her key to unlock her car. But in this case, mine was already unlocked. She thought she had unlocked hers and got into mine. And hers remained unlocked because she had unlocked it,” Alessandro told g1.
After driving off with the wrong car, the woman’s vehicle remained unlocked and parked at the restaurant. “We opened it to see if there was a phone number or something. There was a purse with documents and some storage boxes inside the car. I don’t know how she didn’t notice.”
According to Alessandro, during her trip the woman even noticed that some of her belongings were missing from the car and was already on her way to the police station to report what she believed to be a theft.
“She was going to the police station thinking they had stolen things from inside her car. It was a very strange situation, even funny, because she noticed items were missing and was heading there believing they had been stolen from her car, when in fact she was driving mine,” he said.
Photo: Military Police of Santa Catarina. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
