A man had called 911 for an accident he had. He said he was on a median and gave the street name that he was on, but instead of “street” it was really an “avenue”. When NYC likes a street name they tend to give it to several other roads as well, often parallel and in the same vicinity. It’s all part of the charm.

At some point our crash victim called back. Text in the call information stated he was “still waiting and getting impatient”. This time around he gave some landmarks and a few other street names nearby and we could figure out what area he meant. He had driven his car over a curb and into a light pole on the median. He would never give a good reason for the collision; no talk of swerving to avoid an obstacle, or another car forcing him off the road. He wanted us to just accept that the event had happened and just deal with the aftermath.

The front end of the car had a bit of damage and was leaking. There was also a screwdriver wedged into the front passenger door by the window. Inside the car we saw an open beer can in the cup holder and several stuffed animals lined up in the rear window that didn’t seem to have been affected by the impact.

The driver was a young man in his early 20’s with brown hair and brown eyes. He was walking around the car casually and talking on his phone. When we approached him he did that annoying finger thing rude people do to indicate they will be with you in a moment. Eventually he finished his call and complained to us about how long he had to wait. “What if it were an emergency?” he said.

We brought him over to our ambulance so we could check him out. He didn’t have any real medical complaints. He said his hand hurt somewhat but he could move it normally without much pain. Then he mentioned his ankle. He remembered it twisting when the car hit the pole. But it too seemed OK and he had walked on it without any issues.

When the police arrived our patient seemed unconcerned when they asked him for his drivers license and registration. He only handed them his license. “The car’s not mine,” he told them. “It belongs to my cousin. I was just borrowing it.”

“We still need the registration.” said the officer.

“You do?” he asked, very surprised.

“We’re going to move it out of the way and then we’ll talk about it.”

Again, the patient seemed unconcerned. When the police came back they asked if he was going to go to the hospital. The man decided that he didn’t want to go. The police waited until he signed our paperwork refusing transport and then they read him his rights and arrested him.

The car had come up as stolen. There was every indication that it was even without checking a database. The car had been running but there were no keys. The car had been hot-wired and there were an assortment of tools in the car that were geared towards car theft. There were also some other stolen goods in the car that were not connected to the car theft.

Could our impatient driver not have known how suspicious everything would look when he called? Initially we thought his cousin had perhaps stolen the car and our patient had taken it without knowing. But it didn’t explain the creative starting mechanism. And it turned out that, of course, there was no cousin. After coming up with several different versions of events that were easily discredited with the slightest follow up questions the patient admitted that he had done everything alone. When the police searched his jacket later they would also find a substantial amount of narcotics.

Was this his first stolen car? Was it his first time doing something illegally? I can’t imagine he would have ever been successful as a criminal. Our guy (not so) patiently waited for a 911 response he had initiated. He called several times for an accident he could have very easily driven away from. But instead he was going to jail.

“Why did you even call 911?” we asked him.

He looked at us like he couldn’t believe he had to explain it. “Because I had an accident. You call 911 when something happens.”