Mother charged £150 to retrieve her own car after it was stolen

Part-time courier Sarah McDonald-Lee, 30, was delivering a parcel when an opportunist thief jumped behind the wheel of her Vauxhall Zafira and sped off – with her daughter Sophie strapped in the back seat watching a DVD.

Twenty minutes later, the missing car was abandoned a mile away, and Sophie was found alone by the side of a busy main road.

But Mrs McDonald-Lee later received a letter from the recovery firm that had retrieved the car for police examination, complaining that the stolen vehicle had been found obstructing a cycle path at the side of the road and holding her responsible for the cost of its services.

Mrs McDonald-Lee and her husband Dan, 27 – an ex-police officer – had to fork out 150 before staff at the compound agreed to release their family car.

The couple also had to pay a professional cleaning company 40 to remove fingerprint dust from windows, doors and upholstery following the police examination of the car.

Mrs McDonald-Lee said: “I feel I’ve been treated really badly – more like a common criminal than the victim of a terrible crime. What happened that day was every mother’s worst nightmare. I went to hell and back before we found Sophie.

“I was just screaming and crying all the time not knowing where he was going to take her and when I was going to see her again.

“The whole experience was just absolutely awful from the moment I saw him tearing off down the road with Sophie in the back of the car, and living with the memory of all that is bad enough without being punished like this.

“If the police want someone to pick up the bill they ought to track down the thief, and make him pay. He’s the one who stole the car and dumped it so it was obstructing the cycle path, not me. Charging me 150 to get my own car back from the police is scandalous, and just adds insult to injury after all I’ve been through.”

Mrs McDonald-Lee has now lodged a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

She added: “The police were brilliant when they answered my 999 call. They responded straight away, and did their best to look after me and Sophie once the car turned up. I thought there had been some sort of mistake when I read the letter from the recovery firm asking for 150, and threatening to charge me 20 a day storage fees for the car, but the police refused to waive the bill when I spoke to them, and said it was all covered by their policy.

“It’s disgusting that they can make us pay for something like this. It just doesn’t make sense at all, and I think they should admit that they’ve made a mistake, and refund the money.”

Sophie has suffered nightmares since the hi-jack, which happened in Retford two weeks ago.

Mrs McDonald-Lee said: “When we got in the car the other day she turned to me and said: ‘That nasty man’s not going to be driving is he, mummy?’

A Nottinghamshire Police spokesman said that inquiries were still under way to track down the car thief.

He said the force had a set policy requiring owners to pay when abandoned vehicles were recovered from the roadside.

The spokesman added: “These matters are set down in legislation, and our policies are probably in line with other forces.”

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