A man underneath an SUV in a Palmdale parking lot was killed when the woman in the driver’s seat was startled out of sleep and backed over him, sheriff’s deputies said.
The man was allegedly trying to steal the vehicle’s catalytic converter.
The death was reported just before 6 p.m. Tuesday in the parking lot of a shopping center alongside Highway 14 in Palmdale, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department said.
The woman told deputies she had been asleep in the driver’s seat of her Ford Excursion when a loud noise woke her. She started the vehicle and began backing out of the parking space — and then felt a bump.
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When she realized she had run over a person, she called 911.
Deputies say the man was one of a group of four people attempting to steal catalytic converters, and he had just begun sawing the Excursion’s when he was run over.
The injured man was taken to Antelope Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His companions — a man and two women — were detained; no arrests were announced by the sheriff’s department.
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