A man is suing an Orange County car dealership after it provided him with a loaner car, then reported that car stolen, leading to his arrest at gunpoint in Laguna Niguel.
Jamie Rodgers was driving on Highway 73 in June 2021 when he was stopped and held at gunpoint by a dozen law enforcement officers armed with rifles and pistols, as reported by Orange County Register.
“I think I’m going to get shot. I am a black man arrested in Orange County. … I’ve heard too many stories about it,” Rodgers told the Register. “I think, I’ll be next.”
Officers were looking for a stolen vehicle and believed Rodgers was armed and dangerous, but it turned out that Car Pros Kia Huntington Beach, which was working on Rodgers’ vehicle, had misplaced the loan agreement.
“Apparently he had fallen behind a filing cabinet,” the Register reported. “The dealership received an invoice for unpaid tolls, couldn’t find the contract and assumed it must have been stolen, Rodgers said.”
In the roughly 10 minutes it took police to discover that Rodgers’ loaner vehicle hadn’t been stolen at all, he had been handcuffed and threatened to shoot if he didn’t follow instructions.
Nearly three years later, lingering PTSD from the incident cost Rodgers his athletic coaching job at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano. Instead, he was forced to turn to a career in real estate.
“He had to reinvent himself,” said Scott Harlan, Rodgers’ lawyer. “The problem with these things is that involuntary bodily movement can result in death.”
Car Pros Kia Huntington Beach did not respond to the Register’s request for comment.
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