Mecoe Booker was driving home from a hair appointment in Ferguson last October.
She stopped to get gas at a QuikTrip off Interstate 170, in Berkeley. Booker pumped her gas, paid, and was headed home to O’Fallon, Illinois, when she noticed she left the cover to the gas tank open.
While still in the parking lot of the gas station, she got out of the car to close it.
“I heard a thump,†she remembers. A young man had jumped into the front seat of her vehicle and closed the driver’s side door. Booker was being carjacked.
“There’s a masked person in my car,†she remembers. He was young, probably not old enough to drive. “He didn’t know how to put the car in drive. I’m banging on the window, and he threw his hands up in the air. I’m screaming, and he put the car in drive and pulled off.â€
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The experience was terrifying for Booker. Her purse was in the car. She had no cash.
“I was distraught,†she says.
In a bit of happenstance, there was a Berkeley police officer parked in the gas station parking lot at the time. He came over to her — after the carjacker had already driven away — while she was on the phone freezing her bank accounts and credit cards.
The police officer looked at the video inside the convenience store. He could see the carjacking, but it wasn’t enough to identify the thief or see which way he drove off. He entered the vehicle as stolen in a police database.
The next day, Booker received what initially seemed like good news. When she called the police officer to check on her stolen vehicle, he let her know it had been found in the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ. The bad news was that the car had been wrecked and severely damaged.
What happened next is what caused Booker to call me.
Her husband, Britt, went to the city’s car lot on Hall Street to retrieve Booker’s personal items from the car. He was told it would cost more than $200 to retrieve the vehicle, plus they would have to pay to get it towed somewhere.
He left the vehicle, and the Bookers let it sit there while they tried to figure out what to do next.
The city passed an ordinance in 2017 saying that victims of car thefts can pick up their vehicles for free if they end up at the tow lot, as long as they do so within 72 hours. The paperwork Booker received doesn’t say anything about that.
Besides being traumatized over the carjacking, Booker had other issues to deal with at the time. She and her husband owned a small business — Harold’s Shrimp & Chicken Sports Bar in downtown ºüÀêÊÓƵ, just off Washington Avenue. Only the “sports bar†part of the restaurant hadn’t come to pass because, like many restaurant owners in the city, they struggled to navigate the city’s arcane liquor license process.
Cash flow was tight. So much so that the insurance had lapsed on her car. She realizes that’s on her. But the reality is that after the car was stolen and wrecked, it left her with no good options.
So the car sat in the lot. The city’s tow lot — like most others like it — charges storage fees every day a car doesn’t get picked up. By the time Booker received a note from the lot telling her that her car had officially been “abandoned,†she owed more than $1,000.
What happened next is what really made her mad. The city sold her car at auction. This is a standard practice, but one that has come under scrutiny for years. A Post-Dispatch investigation more than a decade ago led to federal fraud and bribery charges and the resignation of former police Chief Joe Mokwa.
More recently, in 2021 found people who said they didn’t know the city was selling their stolen cars, and then both a city and state audit questioned financial recordkeeping at the tow lot, particularly relating to the sales of cars.
Two years before her car was stolen, the Board of Aldermen held a series of hearings on the tow lot, with at least one alderwoman — Sharon Tyus — suggesting the city give the revenue from such sales to the car owners. But nothing ever happened with that proposal.
That’s why a couple of months ago, Booker got a strange Facebook message. It was from the person who had bought her car at auction, wondering if Booker could provide the keys and spare keys. She declined.
“I was so upset,†she says. The money from cars sold by the tow lot goes to the city. Meanwhile, she still owes payments on the loan she took out to buy the car.
“If you’re going to sell my vehicle and I’m not going to get compensated that’s a scam, to me,†Booker says. “I do not understand how the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ is capitalizing off a crime and taking the money from victims and benefiting by selling the vehicles.â€
The Bookers closed down their restaurant last week. They hope to try to open one again in the future, but it will probably be on the Illinois side of the river.
“I’m heartbroken,†Booker says. “I just don’t understand how you benefit from my loss.â€