One big mistake cost a 15-year-old his life and injured two accomplices.
Typically, within the automotive Enthusiast community, there isn't much sympathy given to those who get themselves into trouble by stealing somebody else's car. However, this time is different because this story ends with one of the thieves involved losing his life at just 15 years old. Of course this isn't to say that he didn't do anything wrong and certainly isn't to shift blame from two accomplices who are equally at fault. Rather, it's a simple story of getting involved in the wrong behavior with people who only encourage crime until it reaches its boiling point. For this group, that point was crashing a Maserati at high speeds into a wall seriously injuring themselves in the process. So what happened here? Why did three young teenage boys decide to take a Joyride in a car they obviously couldn't handle, which wasn't theirs, leading to one of them dying and the other two being extremely hurt?
Watch the latest Motorious Podcast here.
On October 2nd, Mario Bonilla, 15, Malachi Daniels, 16 and Kendrick Lang, 15, decided to steal a Maserati which had the keys inside of it while sitting on a driveway. The incident occurred in Pinellas County in the early morning With reports from the sheriff's department placing Lang behind the wheel after the three broke into the car. This would have been a pretty standard crime that you might expect to hear about, if it weren't for what happened next. Essentially, the boys took off on a high-speed Joyride but were soon spotted by police helicopters in the area. Despite the County's policy of not chasing suspect vehicles on public roads, the boys apparently thought that they were being chased. This was likely because of the helicopter which was tracking their location right up until the accident.
In true " who could have seen that coming?" fashion, this caused Lang and the others to freak out and begin driving as fast as they could. As the sheriff explained while giving a press conference about the incident, people typically associated with this sort of criminal activity are usually young kids roaming the streets at night looking for cars to steal. They don't have a lot of experience behind the wheel, with some not even having a driver's license. Of course, this Unfortunately led this group to a fatal crash in which Bonilla, the front passenger, was killed. As far as the other two go, Daniels, who is in the backseat of the time, is in critical condition whereas the driver, Lang, is heavily injured but expected to survive. When all was said and done, the car was completely destroyed, but in this particular case that doesn't matter much. It is, of course, terrible to have to worry about what is probably your most expensive possession being taken from you. However here one boy died, one might not survive his injuries, and the other will be scarred for life physically and mentally with the weight of his dead friend constantly hanging over his head. This is not even mentioning the legal consequences of his actions. The moral of this story is that something needs to be done before more kids get killed and more cars gets stolen. The only question is, how is that supposed to get done?
