No charges for parents of 5-year-old who drove SUV on motorway

Utah Highway Patrol trooper saw car swerving on freeway at about 32 mph and pulled it over

The trooper could not see a head above the seat’s headrest and thought the driver might have been impaired (Utah State Police/Utah Highway Patrol)

The parents of a five-year-old boy will not face charges after their son was pulled over while driving on a Utah highway, hoping to make it to California to buy a Lamborghini, a prosecutor said on Friday.

The parents were at work and had no idea their son had taken the keys and driven off in their SUV on Monday, according to Christopher Allred, the district attorney in Weber County, Utah.

“It looked like he just snuck out from underneath his 16-year-old sister’s eyes and made a break,” Mr Allred said. “I have no idea how the kid got as far as he did, but he made it onto the ramp and actually made it on the freeway — headed in the right direction, I might add, to California.”

A Utah Highway Patrol trooper saw the SUV swerving on the freeway at about 32mph and pulled it over. The trooper could not see a head above the seat’s headrest and thought the driver might have been impaired. But when he approached the driver’s side window, he was surprised by what he saw; a child wearing a grey Utah Royals soccer hoodie.

“You’re five years old. Wow!” the trooper, Rick Morgan, said in the dash camera video of the traffic stop. He then asked him, “OK, where did you learn how to drive a car?”

The boy, whose name was not released, had managed to drive about two to three miles from his home before he was stopped in the southbound lane of Interstate 15 in Ogden, about 38 miles north of Salt Lake City, according to the authorities.

Mr Allred said he was not sure how the boy learned to drive. He said the Utah Highway Patrol had investigated that question and others but had not found “any indication that these parents had done anything improper".

“There was no evidence of any kind of neglect or inappropriate action on the part of the parents here,” he said.

The boy himself will not face any legal repercussions, either, Mr Allred said. “Maybe Oprah will buy him a Lamborghini,” he said.

New York Times