Jeep theft thwarted, suspect escapes on skateboard

Ricki Colliflower is familiar with the sound of her car starting. She's not so used to hearing it start while she relaxes in her Imperial Beach apartment. Colliflower surprised a would-be car thief on April 23.

“I left my keys in it," Colliflower said. "I heard him trying to start it," she said of her black Jeep parked in the alley near her home at around 6:15 p.m. She went outside to her car to find a young man with a skateboard in it.

"What are you doing? You're trying to steal my car," she blurted out to the skater. The skater replied, "Oh, sorry,” before jumping out and skating off full speed south on 2nd Street, veering left to skate westward up Ebony Avenue.

Colliflower pursued the skater on foot but couldn't catch him. Colliflower said the young man appeared to be about 17, had black curly hair under a baseball cap worn backward, wore blue jeans with a blue shirt, and was possibly Hispanic.

Colliflower said she got in the "bad habit" of leaving the keys in her car from growing up in the then-small town of Moorpark, CA.

Two sheriff's deputies who arrived at the scene in response to Colliflower's 911 call, a Deputy Knece and a Deputy Gallardo, said no complaint was filed by Colliflower and they had no further comment.