An Australian man used a forklift to suspend his Volkswagen car two metres in the air to stop an alleged thief from driving away with it.
Brendan Mills and his family returned to their home in Logan, Brisbane on 5 June, when they found a woman inside their red Polo. The 24-year-old woman was confronted by the family but refused to get out of the vehicle.
The accused, not identified by police who reported the incident on 14 June, had allegedly broken into the house around 5.20pm local time, showered and changed into a pair of clothes taken from the family home before making her way towards the car, police said.
She was about to go when the Mills family caught her in the act. When she refused to step out of the car, Mr Mills promptly got into his forklift and hoisted the car nearly two metres in the air.
The woman failed to open the car door and remained inside the vehicle till the police arrived.
“It all unfolded in front of us so fast,” Mr Mills told 7News’s breakfast show Sunrise.
“I asked them many times get out of the car: ‘We’re home, you’re busted. Get out the car, you know it’s over’,” he said, adding that the person did not want to get out.
“The fact that they didn’t want to get out of the car was strange,” he added.
“My family were standing by watching the whole thing unfold, so you can’t do anything too silly.
“You had this immense amount of adrenaline running through the system, lots of thoughts cross your mind... I just went, ‘Well, there’s a forklift sitting there - why not?’”
Once the police arrived, the car was lowered and the woman was arrested. “Just stop there, out you get,” an officer could be heard saying in a video shared on social media.
The woman has been charged with burglary and unlawful use of a motor vehicle.
Mr Mills said the reason behind having a forklift in his yard was because of his profession in the automotive trade which required heavy lifting.
Although Mr Mills was praised for his spontaneous thinking, police have discouraged citizens from participating in similar acts.
“To ensure community safety, police recommend members of the public not engage in methods of disrupting criminal activity which may involve risk of personal harm or further legal recourse,” a police spokesperson was quoted by news.com.au as saying.
