A 6-year-old girl from Pittsburgh took her mother's car out Sunday morning, hitting two parked cars and eventually smashing the vehicle into a utility pole, all in an effort to drive to see her father in a nearby town.
"How she knew how to operate a car, your guess is as good as mine," Police Sgt. Jerry Parker told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
WTAE reports that the mother of the young girl awoke to find that both her daughter and her car were gone and called the police.
The girl managed to drive her mother's BMW a half mile before she hit anything, and though she was not hurt in the incident, a neighbor who was outside shoveling snow told WTAE that he had a close call with the oncoming vehicle.
"I thought she was going to hit me, but then she stopped just in time not to hit me, and as I observed, she was this little kid. She couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9 years old," Rommie Hawkins told the news outlet.
Police said the investigation is ongoing.
While 6 may be a little young to operate a car, children as young as 4 years old have been known to take their parents' cars for a spin. A toddler in Sweden was responsible for causing a minor accident last fall when he stole his mother's car while she was sleeping, but not before he successfully made three right turns. Police opted not to pursue the case.
Similarly, in South Florida in 2008, a 7-year-old boy stole his grandmother's SUV with a friend because he was mad at his mother. The boy took out two mailboxes, hit two parked cars and two moving cars.
"It's fun to do bad things and drive into a car," the boy told CNN at the time.
And though a parent's car might be the easiest target, it seems children aren't too picky when it comes to choosing a vehicle.
A 10-year-old boy in Philadelphia grabbed the keys from the back door of a van while its owner was unloading furniture in October. The boy attempted to take the car for a joy ride but didn't even make it half a block before hitting five cars. He was charged with criminal mischief.