Eula Archie is a dedicated Toyota owner. She’s been a regular customer of Stone Mountain Toyota in Atlanta, Georgia, for the last decade. During that time, she’s bought four cars from them. Her latest car, a RAV4, needed to be diagnosed for a battery issue. So, she dropped it off at her local dealership and trusted the team to take care of her SUV. 

That blind faith ended up being her downfall. Just days after she brought it in, the local police department received a call for an abandoned vehicle from workers at a nearby animal sanctuary and hospital. 

Body camera footage uploaded by Atlanta News First showed a sanctuary employee telling officers they’re regularly seeing stolen cars being dumped in their lot, and assumed that was the case for the car police were responding to. 

It was Archie’s RAV4. When the officer called her to let her know they’d found her car, she was dumbfounded. 

“I left it at the dealership,” she told the responding officer, rightfully shocked. The dealership paid to have it towed back to its facility and vowed to fix her car promptly. 

Then her car was almost immediately stolen again

Since the dealership wasn’t aware the call was coming from inside the house, no one thought much of it. However, the thief still had Archie’s key fob and used it to steal her RAV4 once again. 

Video surveillance obtained by the dealership shows the thief walking into the service area, unlocking the doors, and driving through the automatic service doors once more. 

When police came to notify dealership managers, the general manager was recorded asking, “Did he steal it again?” and facepalmed—all captured by the officer’s body camera.

Archie was almost too shocked for words that the same man stole her car, despite other, nicer options. 

“There are all these new, beautiful cars, and someone’s after mine? I just don’t understand,” she told reporters. “After the second time, I thought, ‘Something isn’t right here. Something’s wrong.”

Now the dealership is under investigation 

After Archie’s story was published, the outlet was notified that the dealership was being investigated by the state attorney general’s office. The newly appointed general manager told them they were cooperating fully with the investigation, but couldn’t comment further. 

Archie is happy to have her car back, and in one piece. However, she’s disappointed the dealership hasn’t apologized or explained the repeat thefts, if the thief was fired or apprehended, and what the next steps were.

“I’m just incredibly disappointed,” Archie told the officer over the phone. “I can’t believe they let somebody like that on the lot.”

The officer told her he’s been an officer for a while, and saw some crazy stuff—but never “this much incompetence.”