Late night joyrides usually involve a stolen car, maybe a golf cart if things are getting really wild. In Woodland, California, two teenage girls decided to raise the bar considerably by taking a forklift for a spin instead, and the results were exactly as chaotic as you’d imagine.
According to the Woodland Police Department, dispatchers began fielding calls just after midnight about a forklift being driven around town by two females. What makes this even stranger is that the calls were coming from opposite ends of the city, meaning this thing was covering some serious ground for a piece of warehouse equipment that tops out at roughly 15 to 20 miles per hour.
Officers searched the area but couldn’t track down the wayward forklift right away. It wasn’t until later in the shift that a call came in about the forklift doing donuts in Ferns Park. When police arrived, they caught the machine exiting the park and confronted the two young operators, who promptly abandoned ship and ran on foot. Both were caught quickly and turned out to be juveniles from Woodland.
The joyride left a trail of damage behind it. Investigators say the forklift was used to bust up a curb near the park, flip over a large concrete picnic table, and tear up a section of grass. On top of that, police determined the forklift had been stolen in the first place, so this wasn’t just a case of borrowing heavy machinery without asking nicely.
The Getaway That Wasn’t
For a vehicle that isn’t exactly built for stealth or speed, the forklift managed to give officers a run for their money for a while. Forklifts aren’t designed with fast getaways in mind, but apparently nobody told these two that.
Once the vandalism spree hit the park, though, the joyride came to its natural end.
Booked for More Than Just Vandalism
Police booked both girls into Yolo County Juvenile Hall on charges of theft and vandalism. The department also threw in “operating a forklift without proper certification” in their Facebook post, though they were quick to clarify that particular charge was a joke.
Fair enough, because we’re guessing OSHA doesn’t have jurisdiction over stolen forklifts doing donuts at midnight.
Our Take
Look, nobody wants to see public property damaged or a forklift go missing, and we’re glad this ended without anyone getting hurt. But there’s something almost impressive about the audacity here. Most joyrides involve a car left running in a driveway.
This one required actually knowing how to operate a forklift, which is more than we can say for some of us who’ve white-knuckled a stick shift in a parking lot. As one commenter on the department’s post pointed out, these two showed more control behind the controls than plenty of certified adults manage on the job.
We’re not endorsing grand theft forklift by any means, but we won’t pretend it isn’t a wild story to read on a Monday.