Sheena and Cole Burie were visiting San Diego earlier this year on a family trip when Oceanside police officers stopped them, pulled their guns and handcuffed the couple.
They describe it as a traumatizing experience that they’re still dealing with to this day, all because of a mistake by a car rental company.
“We couldn’t even look at each other,” Sheena told NBC San Diego. "We couldn’t move at all. I remember whispering that I love you."
Sheena described her visit Oceanside as a total nightmare after getting pulled over by several police officers after the rental minivan rental they were in was reported as stolen.
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After the couple were handcuffed and searched, officers looked through the minivan to find the rental contract the couple said should be there, but the officers were unable to find it. Sheena said that the whole time, she was thinking about her daughter, who they had just dropped off at a shopping mall with a friend.
“That was my huge fear: I just dropped off my kid, I’m thousands of miles away from home. What is going to happen?” Sheens said she asked herself.
About a half-hour later, police were able to confirm the Buries were not riding in a stolen vehicle and released them from custody.
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According to a police report, dispatch was able to contact Payless Car Rental and confirm the vehicle was no longer stolen. The report said the company never contacted police to remove the van from law enforcement's stolen-vehicle system.
In a statement to NBC San Diego, Payless Car Rental said the following:
“Payless and its independent franchises each have safeguards in place to prevent unnecessary notifications to retrieve rental vehicles. Unfortunately, these protocols in this isolated incident failed. Our franchisee has apologized to Mr. and Mrs. Burie and refunded them for the rental.”
After the incident, the couple hired an attorney to file a lawsuit against Payless and get the officers’ body-worn camera video, who shared it with NBC San Diego.
An attorney for Payless sent NBC San Diego an email, that read, in part that she “finds it disappointing that Ms. Burie and her attorney have attempted to pressure Payless into paying large sums of money by threatening to paint Payless in a poor light to the media.”
The attorney also said Payless' employees “apologized to Sheena multiple times, but she was not interested in an apology for what was clearly an unintentional and unfortunate isolated incident.”
Sheena told NBC San Diego that “we wouldn't be here right now if we had a sincere apology from the beginning.”
The Payless attorney emphasized the full context of the body cam video, pointing out how Cole was laughing with the police officers.
Cole, however, stated he was angry and fearful at the time, despite his laughter.
The Payless attorney also pointed out that if the Buries had the rental agreement with them at the time they were pulled over, they could have cleared everything up quickly.
In a statement sent to NBC News Now, Oceanside Police said "the officers involved in this case met the expectations of the department in their conduct. They were courteous throughout this incident and explained their reasoning as they were able."
The Burie's incident is not isolated. In 2022, Hertz agreed to pay $168 million to settle several lawsuits brought against them by customers who were wrongly accused of stealing cars they had rented.
