Residents claim stolen car purchased from thieves by Kingston scrap yard

A stolen car’s reappearance has shed light on what might be a much bigger issue, according to two Kingston men who found their prized vehicle stripped and waiting for demolition at a local scrap yard on Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2022. Andrew Good and his son, Logan, want people to be aware of their story.

Good visited his gym on the morning of Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2022, and returned to his home on Compton Street at around 11 a.m. to find that his son’s car was gone from the driveway. “I thought to myself, ‘where did my son go?’ I thought he was home, so I called him and asked, ‘Where did you go?’ He’s like, ‘I’m at home.’,” Good recalled. “‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Where’s the car?'” 

The Toyota Corolla that Good had given his son for his sixteenth birthday had been stolen, right outside their home.

“We only got the car two years ago,” said Good. “It was the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve got a work truck, but it’s a work truck and I didn’t want him to learn to drive on it. He is in love with Toyotas and the old Toyotas especially… I happened across this car that is 20 years old, but it had only 90,000 kilometres, driven by a little old lady that only went to church on Sunday in it. It was in immaculate shape, and we were only the second owner. Oh, it was a real unicorn of a car that you’ll never find again.”

“I bought it, I taught my son to drive in it, and he’s been working to pay me back for two years to own the car for himself because it’s his first car,” said Good. He noted that the theft was upsetting to both of them, even beyond the financial loss, because of the sentimental value of the car for Logan.

The Goods filed a police report and resigned themselves to the likelihood that they had seen the last of the Toyota. “We figured it’s probably gone and we’ll never see it again,” said Good.

That all changed, however, when the Goods visited European Auto Parts/Mulrooney Metals on McAdoo’s Lane on Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2022.

“As we were unloading, we saw a couple of older wrecked vehicles,” said Good. “We’re sort of car guys, and we decided to take the long way out [of the scrap yard] so that we could take a look at these old junkers.” 

That’s when, in what Andrew says was a “surreal moment,” they saw their stolen car, completely stripped down among the hulking wrecks.

“We were both just filled with rage because it’s our car, and yet this company has it,” Good expressed. He went into the business’s office and admits he had some strong words for the staff there. “I mean, what I basically said was, ‘Since when do you guys accept stolen vehicles?’ And he huffed and puffed and said, ‘Well, we don’t ever get stolen vehicles. We’re better than that.'”

Good demanded to see the vehicle’s paperwork. When the employee retrieved the paperwork for the vehicle and showed the Goods the ownership papers, the Goods’ suspicions were vindicated. “I said, ‘Guess whose flipping name is on that ownership?'”

“The guy suddenly shifted everything about his attitude then,” said Good, who then asked who had dropped off the car. “[The staff member said], ‘Well, it was two really sketchy people, and there was a girl, and she had a mask on, and she signed for it.'”

Good added that he asked the staff member if they had checked the signature on the ownership for a match, and didn’t get a satisfactory response. “I asked, ‘Since when do you guys accept cars with the locks punched out? Where’s the key to the car?’ All the things that you just think should be [done when someone drops off a car to wreck].”

The staff member, Good asserted, had no answers. “He just said, ‘But, but, but, they had the ownership; it’s not my fault.'”

What bothers Good more than just the loss of the car, he said, is that he feels there is, “a bigger issue here. They (Mulrooney Metals) don’t care if it’s stolen. This is one step above racketeering.”

“A news story just broke on Twitter,” said Good, referring to a Kingston Police report published on Thursday, Apr. 21, 2022, “where the police are looking for these thieves who have been stealing catalytic converters. [Mulrooney Metals] advertise, they post publicly: ‘Bring us your catalytic converters and sell them here! And on top of that, give us a call and we’ll tell you which ones are the most valuable.’ I mean, this is one step above putting these thieves on your payroll.”

Catalytic converter thefts have been an ongoing and growing issues across eastern Ontario, according to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).

The Goods contacted Kingston Police to inform them of their discovery. “A constable showed up, got our story, and he was under the impression that we found our car and I just wanted to drive it away,” Good said. “But they’d already stripped it bare.”

Good had little sympathy for any loss or inconvenience that this incident may have caused for Mulrooney Metals. “Even when they’re caught red-handed, [Mulrooney Metals] thinks, ‘oh, we’re the victim of a crime here’… The difference is [scrap metal and parts-salvage businesses] are profiting from it… This is not just a Kingston problem. This is an industry problem.”

“[This industry] has done this for years and years,” Good alleged, pointing to the number of comments on a Reddit post his son had made about the incident. “Look at all the comments on Reddit. How many people are chiming in, ‘Same thing happened to me.’? It’s an industry that has been left unchecked and they’re profiting off crime – to profit from it is to endorse it.”

A representative for Mulrooney Trucking Ltd., the parent company that owns European Auto Parts & Mulrooney Metals provided the following statement:

“Out of respect for the ongoing police investigation that we are participating in to find the individual or individuals who sold the vehicle we are not in a position to comment at this time.”

For their part, Kingston Police said they could not provide comment, due to the fact this is an ongoing investigation, however, the Criminal Investigation Unit is currently investigating, and a report should be forthcoming. With regard to whether or not European Auto Parts and Mulrooney Metals have been investigated in the past, Kingston Police said that, unless a person or a business has been charged as part of an investigation, police do not name those involved.

Police also said that anyone who may have information regarding the purchase of stolen vehicles by any local business, or have stories similar to the Goods’, should contact Kingston Police at 613-549-4660.

This is a developing story with more to come.

With files from Tori Stafford.