Summer’s over, and just when you thought it was safe to park pricey identical vehicles next to each other, unlocked and with the key fobs still inside....and not expect something to go wrong, well, think again.
Call this one whatever you want — a theft-not-theft might be about right — but on the evening of Oct. 11, for at least the third time this year, someone drove home in the wrong car, thinking it was theirs and prompting a report of a stolen vehicle. It happened in front of the Sag Harbor Municipal Building, 55 Main Street, where two white 2021 Lexuses were parked side by side.
Linda Brienza returned to what looked like her vehicle after leaving it on the street for a little over half an hour. Once she got home, she realized that the car she had thought was hers wasn’t — and when she went back to Main Street, her own Lexus was gone. She reported a stolen vehicle to police that night.
Meanwhile, Jeanette Lofas of Division Street, owner of the identical twin Lexus. Ms. Lofas, like Ms. Brienza, had driven off, all unknowing, in the wrong car, but didn’t realize it and left it parked at her house.
Ms. Brienza, with the assistance of Sag Harbor Village police, was able to track her vehicle to Ms. Lofas’s house, where she recovered it. Her key fob was still inside.
By then, however, Ms. Lofas was in the city, according to police. She appears to have returned home to find Ms. Brienza’s Lexus, which she had thought was hers, no longer parked at her house. On Oct. 12, she filed a separate stolen-car report — only it wasn’t her car, and it wasn’t missing.
As they were reconnecting Ms. Brienza with her own Lexus, police said, they had also secured Ms. Lofas’s key fob for safekeeping until they could let her know that the car she had reported stolen from her house had indeed been stolen — by her, and by accident — and that her Lexus, which had not been stolen, was safe and sound. She picked it up later that day.