According to the Weirton Daily Times, Patrolman Jacob Koehler of the East Palestine, Ohio, police department responded a series of calls from concerned citizens reporting a small boy tooling through town in a minivan on the evening of April 9. Eventually, Koehler tracked the culprit to the local McDonald's. He was 8 years old.
When asked how and why he'd driven to McDonald's, the boy said he really wanted a cheeseburger but his parents were asleep. So he watched a driving instruction video on YouTube, grabbed his dad's keys, scooped some money out of his piggybank, packed his 4-year-old sister in the family minivan, and headed out. Throughout his drive of roughly a mile and a half, the boy followed traffic laws, stopped for red lights, and avoided hitting anything.
Once he got to the McDonald's, he pulled through the drive-through like a pro, ordering a cheeseburger, some chicken nuggets for his sister, and some fries. The McDonald's employees thought they were being pranked.
"The workers thought that the parents were in the back, but obviously they weren't," Koehler told the Times.
A story with a happy ending: The kids got their late-night snack, no one was hurt, and no one got in trouble.
