He Took the Handicap Spot From a Veteran With a Fake Placard. The Tow Truck Was Already Waiting
He Took the Handicap Spot From a Veteran With a Fake Placard. The Tow Truck Was Already Waiting. Here is what happened next.
The Publix on the corner in Port St. Lucie, Florida, is busy every Saturday afternoon. The parking lot shimmers in the heat, carts rattle across the asphalt, and the four blue handicap spaces by the front door are almost always taken by people who really need them.
On this Saturday, one of them was taken by a man who didn’t.
A man in his early sixties named Earl sat in a manual wheelchair at the edge of the lot. He had served two tours in Vietnam and lost the use of his legs in a construction accident twenty years later. His wife had dropped him off near the entrance while she circled for a spot for their van, the one with the ramp, the one that needs the wide striped aisle next to a handicap space.
She was pulling toward the last open handicap space when a shiny white sports car cut in front of her and slid straight into it.
A man hopped out. Late twenties. Polo shirt, sunglasses pushed up in his hair, wireless earbuds, a gym bag over his shoulder. He reached back inside and hung a blue disabled parking placard from the rearview mirror. Then he jogged, actually jogged, toward the store.
He passed right by Earl’s wheelchair.
Earl said, “Son, my wife needed that spot. She’s got the van with the ramp.”
The man didn’t even slow down. “Relax, old man,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be five minutes.”
The automatic doors slid open and he was gone.
A woman loading groceries into her SUV two spaces over had seen the whole thing. She had her phone out. “He’s not disabled at all,” she said, filming the placard hanging in the window. “He literally jogged in. Did you see that?”
Earl just sighed. He had seen it a hundred times. His wife idled in the aisle, unable to unload him anywhere near the door.
What none of them knew was that someone else had seen it too.
At the edge of the lot, a flatbed tow truck had been parked in the shade. The driver, a heavyset man named Luis, was eating a sandwich and waiting on a call for a dead battery that had canceled ten minutes earlier. Luis had a younger brother in a wheelchair. He had seen the sports car, the jog, the placard, and the old man.
Luis finished his sandwich, wiped his hands, and made a phone call.
Port St. Lucie has a program where volunteers and police check disabled parking permits. Luis had the number memorized. The officer on duty that afternoon happened to be at the gas station across the street. She was there in four minutes. She walked up to the white sports car, read the placard number through the windshield, and typed it into her tablet.
Her eyebrows went up.
She waved at Luis. Luis started his truck.
The woman filming had moved closer now, and so had three other shoppers. Earl’s wife had parked the van crookedly across two regular spaces and come over to stand beside him.
The flatbed backed up behind the sports car with a loud beep, beep, beep. Luis climbed down, hooked the chains, and the bed tilted. The white car began to slide up, nose first, shining in the sun.
That was when the automatic doors opened.
The man in the polo came out holding two grocery bags and a protein shake. He was laughing at something in his earbuds. Then he looked up and saw his car rising into the air.
“Hey!” he shouted. He ran toward the truck. “Hey! That’s my car! What are you doing?”
“Is this your vehicle, sir?” the officer asked calmly.
“Yes! I have a handicap placard! It’s right there!”
The officer held up the blue placard. Luis had pulled it from the mirror before lifting the car.
“This placard is registered to a Dorothy Whitman,” she said. “Is that you?”
The man opened his mouth. Closed it.
“She’s… she’s my grandmother,” he said.
The officer looked at her tablet. Then she looked at him.
“This placard belongs to your grandmother,” she said. “She passed away last year.”
The man dropped both grocery bags. A carton of eggs cracked on the hot asphalt. The protein shake rolled under the tow truck.
The crowd went dead quiet. Then somebody in the back started clapping. Then another person. The woman filming said, “Oh my God,” very softly, still recording.
Earl didn’t clap. He just watched.
The man turned toward him, red-faced, like he might say something. Earl raised one eyebrow, and the man looked away.
“Sir,” the officer said, “using a deceased person’s disabled permit is a crime in Florida. I’m going to need your license.”
The man reached for his wallet with shaking hands.
But as the officer ran his name, her expression changed again. She looked up from her tablet, and this time she didn’t look annoyed.
She looked alarmed.
She put one hand on her radio and stepped back.
“Sir,” she said slowly, “I need you to put your hands on the truck.”
What came up on that screen had nothing to do with a parking space…
What Happened Next
The search came back with an open warrant. The man, Kyle Whitman, 28, was wanted in neighboring Martin County for drawing his late grandmother’s Social Security and pension checks for eleven months after her death, roughly $31,000.
The placard was not the only thing he had kept. He had kept her mail, her bank card, and her identity.
The Grandmother Nobody Visited
Neighbors later told reporters that Dorothy Whitman, a retired school nurse, had spent her last years mostly alone. Kyle visited when the checks arrived.
What Earl Did
Earl’s wife finally parked the van in the open handicap space. Before they went inside, Earl rolled over to the tow truck and shook Luis’s hand. Luis told him about his little brother. The two families have had dinner together every month since.
The video passed four million views. Port St. Lucie says its disabled parking volunteer program had more sign-ups the following week than in the previous five years.
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