Sometimes street justice can go too far. One man in Florida received an alarm notification on his phone that his convenience store had been robbed. When he arrived at the shop several minutes later, he found a teen who tried to flee on an e-bike. That led to the man chasing the suspect and ultimately running him over in the street. However, he chose not to check on the teenager or tell police about what really happened when they arrived.
Home surveillance video shows moment man’s car hit 14-year-old
On October 13 at around 4:30 a.m., officers responded to a call about a possible burglary in progress at the Corner Store, located at 100 South Wickham Road and owned by 32-year-old Kavan Vishnubhai Patel, according to a post by the West Melbourne Police Department on its official Facebook page.
According to police, they were told by Patel that he had received an alert from his store’s alarm company at approximately 4:21 a.m. and saw through the surveillance system that the shop’s front glass door had been broken into. He decided to check on the store since it was only a few minutes away from his residence.
When Patel arrived, he discovered an unknown male, later identified as a 14-year-old male teen (his name has not been disclosed because he is a juvenile), wearing a light-colored hoodie and leaving the area on an e-bike. He told police that he saw the suspect going west on Sheridan Road and lost sight of him.
This led to a search for the suspect by law enforcement from the Melbourne Police Department and Brevard County Sheriff’s Office. They deployed a K-9 unit as well as a drone unit to assist in the search.
However, Patel did not tell officers at the time that he had already found the teenager earlier that morning. Surveillance footage from a home near Cocoanut Grove Avenue, as shown by WESH 2 News, shows Patel allegedly crashing his vehicle into the teen suspect and then into a mailbox and some trash cans. The car is then seen making a U-turn and stopping for a few seconds before driving off.
Store owner finally admits to his crime when police press him
After the search with the K-9 and drone unit failed to yield any results, a WMPD officer located the teenager lying unresponsive in a ditch. The 14-year-old juvenile was transported to Holmes Regional Medical Center for treatment.
Meanwhile, the officers quickly found out the truth of the incident once they saw the surveillance footage. They noted that when officers first arrived at the convenience store, they noticed Patel checking damage done to the front passenger side of his vehicle. It also matched the description of the car that was involved in the incident.
Police then pressed Patel with the information they discovered, and when “he was no longer in the presence of his wife,” he told them what he had really done. He admitted to following the teenager with his vehicle and intentionally striking him while he was riding his e-bike. He told police he was driving around 30 miles per hour when he struck him. Patel said he tried to find where the suspect after the collision but couldn’t find him. He acknowledged that he should have alerted police of the incident and should have contacted law enforcement before running the teenager over.
Because Patel did not tell officers about the collision and where it occurred, police say that it took them an hour longer to find the teenager. The juvenile’s injuries include multiple skull fractures and other serious injuries, with WESH 2 stating that the 14-year-old was still in critical condition on the night of October 13.
Patel was arrested for aggravated battery and for leaving the scene of a crash involving great bodily injury.
