Phil Rine has little hope he will ever see his beloved 2015 Dodge Challenger Hellcat again.
Last Sunday, while he was home watching television, two thieves stole his car right from his driveway in Deer Park, New York.
Ring camera video shows one person breaking the passenger window, climbing into the car through that window, and putting the car in neutral. While one person steered, another pushed his Hellcat to the street.
Rine ran downstairs and opened the front door, pleading with them to leave the car. It was 10:45 at night.
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“I started yelling at them, ‘Leave the car alone! Leave it alone! They didn’t even look at me. They didn’t even flinch,” recounted Rine.
Once the car was on the street a white SUV appeared and pushed his car away. Phil says it was a Mercedes SUV. They were able to steal the car without ever turning on the engine to his car. He called 911 and cops showed up in minutes but it was too late
“They immediately disabled the tracking,” explained Rine. “There was nothing that was able to be done at that point.”
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The day after, Rine received a phone call from a woman who lives in Howard Beach, Queens. She asked him if he was the owner of a black Dodge Hellcat with a distinctive decal on the side of the car.
“She told me she saw my car had another vehicle. A white SUV was across the street,” Rine recalled. “They were jumping up and down on the hood, taking pictures of each other and at that point the car has been running because she saw them drive it away.”
Because the men had thrown the contents of the car onto the street, the woman was able to find a card with Rine’s name on it and contacted him.
“I never thought this would happen to me,” said Shawn McCabe of Selden. “Going outside and seeing your car gone is just an empty feeling.”
Days later, Shawn McCabe also had his purple Dodge Challenger Hellcat stolen from his driveway. It happened at two in the morning. By the time he woke up at 4 a.m. to head to work, McCabe saw that his car was gone, shattered glass left on his driveway. He checked his cameras.
“They had three guys working on my car,” McCabe explained and showed us the video, two men pushing the car off the driveway in a similar way. “And then a white SUV was in the street and ready to push it away.”
Police say they are investigating both incidents but would not say if the two thefts are linked. For McCabe and Rine, the similarities are hard to ignore.
As Rine waits to hear about his car, he still can’t believe he saw it happen and was powerless to stop it.
“It’s bad enough that I lost my car which I really loved, but the worst part is the feeling of being violated. The sickness that I felt that night and my stomach was just awful.”
