A Maryland man’s stolen car has been accruing $20 per day in impound fees for months after it was recovered in D.C., but the owner said no one ever contacted him to tell him it had been found.
Andrew Passie had just paid off the car he uses to take his kids to school and get himself to work when it was stolen from outside his Seat Pleasant home Nov. 15.
“Yeah, I saw him get in the car when I was running towards my car,” he said. “He was going, we were running away with the car. So, I called the police.”
Passie waited for months hoping his car would be found. Then in late January, he called Seat Pleasant police to see if there was any update, and to his delight, they told him D.C. police found his car and he could pick it up at an impound lot in Northeast.
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When he got there, he was told he would have to pay the storage fees. The car having been found Nov. 24, it had been at the lot for 97 days. At $20 per day in impound fees and the $100 tow fee, Passie owes $2,040 to get his car back.
But Passie said D.C. police never notified him they had the car.
“I never received a letter; nobody called me,” he said. “I feel that the police were unfair to me and they delayed the time. You gotta go tell me in a week’s time. I would kind of pay for my car and carry it. But it was there for two to three months.”
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“So discouraging. It's unfair to me, because it was stolen,” Passie said. “I never did anything criminal.”
For now, Passie can only look at the car through a fence.
“Each time I come and see it, I feel so bad,” he said.
When a car is stolen in one jurisdiction and recovered in another, it’s the responsibility of the recovering jurisdiction to notify the owner.
The chief of Seat Pleasant police said his department followed proper procedure. Police records show D.C. police did attempt to notify the owner, the chief said.
A D.C. police spokesperson confirmed they made at least one attempt to contact Passie but couldn’t say how that attempt was made or if there was more than one attempt.
D.C. would not say if they would help Passie recover his car. In the meantime, Passie's bill is getting bigger by the day.
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