SOEST, Germany — An 8-year-old German boy stole his mother’s car and took it for a night-time drive at 87 mph (140 kmph) along a highway, local police said.
The child was discovered parked at a motorway services along the A44 highway near the northwest German city of Soest in the early hours of Wednesday — about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from his home.
The boy’s mother called police at 12:25 a.m., alerting them that her son had taken her VW Golf, which has automatic transmission.
Local police and the boy’s mother started to look for the car-loving child, and he was found by his mother shortly after in a service station along the autobahn.
The boy had parked the car and turned on the hazard lights, securing the area with a warning triangle.
When speaking to police after the incident, the boy reportedly said: “I just wanted to drive a little bit.”
A spokesperson for Soest North Rhine-Westphalia police told CNN that the boy stopped driving because he didn’t feel comfortable driving on the motorway.
The boy would regularly go karting and drive bumper cars and had driven a car on private property, police said.
Police told CNN that they had spoken to the boy about the danger posed by his night-time ride, and that he would face no criminal charges.
