A car thief with cold feet reportedly decided to return the stolen vehicle to its owner at a Bluffton apartment complex — but when he arrived to see police on scene, he fled on foot and left his friend to take the blame, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies arrived just before 1 a.m. Monday morning to the Emerson Isles apartments off Simmonsville Road, where a resident reported his 2015 Chevrolet Sonic had been stolen. The man had left his keys in his unit’s front door while he went inside to find his wallet, he told police. When he came back outside, both his keys and car were gone.
While police questioned the man, he and his roommates “heard the exhaust of his Sonic” and saw the compact car driving into the complex’s driving lot, according to a sheriff’s office incident report. One deputy climbed pack into his patrol vehicle and approached the vehicle, which had come to a stop before a man stepped out of the driver’s seat.
The driver, identified as Bluffton man Angel Rostro-Barron, told deputies he had been contacted a few hours before by his friend in Hardeeville, who admitted to stealing the compact car from the apartments and asked for help with “either stashing the vehicle for later or dumping it somewhere,” according to the incident report. Rostro-Barron agreed to help and was later picked up in the Sonic, he told police.