LUBBOCK, Texas — Jamye Bowers just moved to a neighborhood in South Lubbock a week ago. She and a close friend went to celebrate their sons’ birthdays at dinner Saturday night and then drove back to her apartment afterwards to hang out.
She said she went to bed around 2:00 a.m, and sometime between falling asleep and her son going outside around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, her car was gone.
“My son went outside to get something from his dinner that evening before out of the car, and he came back and told me it was gone,” Bowers said. “I said what’s gone? He said, the whole car. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
Bowers’ vehicle had been stolen. She said when she got home from dinner Saturday night, she was carrying in a bunch of items from her car.
“Coming in from dinner, I must’ve dropped my bag that has all of my keys in it somewhere in the street,” Bowers said. “Whenever I came out Sunday morning, it was gone. The whole car was gone.”
Bowers immediately called the Lubbock Police Department around 8:30 a.m. Sunday. She said officers showed up to her apartment near 76th Street and Elgin Ave. 12 minutes later.
Bowers said she had a lot of items in the car from the move to this new apartment.
“There were a lot of home items, a lot of personal things that we had just been moving,” Bowers said. “It was my first weekend off since I moved in, and so my car was loaded down with stuff that I just wasn’t going to ask my child to help me unload on his birthday.”
About an hour after her initial call to LPD, police found her car a few blocks over near 76th St. and Waco Ave. Police found several people in her car. They all took off running, but on Monday, 18-year-old Jerrell Johnson was taken into custody and charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and evading arrest. He’s since bonded out of jail.
Bowers took to Facebook in hopes of finding the parents of the six kids accused of stealing her car. To her surprise, one of the mothers reached out. She apologized to Bowers and confessed she had some of the items at her home.
“I got a message first thing this morning from the other mom letting me know that she feels like she had found some of my items in her son’s bedroom,” Bowers said. “I went over to her house, we had a very, very cordial interaction. She apologized, and I was able to get some of my stuff back.”
Bowers said she has no hard feelings. She just wants the young people accused of stealing her car to understand how their actions affect others.
“It’s never easy to admit that your kid failed, and especially to that magnitude,” Bowers said. “Her kids were the ones driving my car. That vulnerability and the risk that you take putting yourself out there just to let me know, like, ‘Hey, I see you need help, I’m trying to help you, this is all I can do to help you in this situation,’ you know, knowing that you’re willing to do that says a lot to me.”
Bowers said she is thankful the mother of one of the kids who stole her car returned her son’s backpack ahead of his college midterms this week. She has not been able to get her car back yet but said it’s currently at the Lubbock Wrecker.
