More than 20 cars damaged at Orange County used car dealership

Surveillance video shows man intentionally crashing cars

ORLANDO, Fla. – A $500 reward has been posted, after workers at a used car dealership showed up to work Tuesday to find dozens of their cars damaged.

Margaret Luise is the office manager at Metro Auto Sales, just off Colonial Drive.

"It looks like he had his own crash-o-rama," she said. "He just keeps backing into all the cars. He hits this one, he hits the van, he hits the little one."

Luise showed News 6 surveillance video, which shows a man sneaking onto their lot a little before 5 a.m. Tuesday and breaking into an SUV, then using it to drive around and hit as many cars as possible over the course of an hour.

"I don't know if he didn't realize there were cameras there, or he just didn't care," she said.

Luise said the damage adds up to about $30,000 and she's not sure why someone would do this.

“We’re a small family-owned business,” Luise said. “We just never expected something like this to happen.”

Several employees and customers slept at the dealership the next night, hoping the perpetrator would come back.

"We're not going to stand back and let somebody do this again," employee Cornelius Holt said. "We hope they catch him very quickly."

In the meantime, the business plans on adding more security cameras, while they wait to see how much insurance will cover.

"It puts us in a bind," Luise said. "A lot of cars we have are cash cars we paid out of pocket for and now we can't sell them because we have to fix them."

News 6 has learned the Orange County Sheriff's Office is investigating.

Metro Auto Sales has posted a $500 reward for anyone with information about who is responsible for the vandalism.


About the Author:

It has been an absolute pleasure for Clay LePard living and working in Orlando since he joined News 6 in July 2017. Previously, Clay worked at WNEP TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he brought viewers along to witness everything from unprecedented access to the Tobyhanna Army Depot to an interview with convicted double-murderer Hugo Selenski.

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