Austin Nolan-Copple wasn’t about to go near a stolen vehicle on her own.
The vacant property she was driving to on Sept. 11 was supposed to be her mother-in-law’s new home, the 33-year-old Raft Island resident told The News Tribune. They didn’t have a house built yet, but they did have a shipping container on the property full of building materials. It was where her mother-in-law planned to retire, close to family on the Key Peninsula.
A few weeks prior, her mother-in-law called her with alarm. She had found unfamiliar vehicles scattered across the lot. It appeared that someone had cut the lock on their gate and broken in. Nolan-Copple reported the incident to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, and detectives later found a stolen Subaru hidden inside the shipping container, the lock to which had also been cut…