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'You're 5 Years Old. Wow!' Child Stopped on Highway Headed for California

The driver of the SUV swerved on the freeway at 32 mph when a trooper for the Utah Highway Patrol spotted and pulled him over.

The trooper could not see a head above the seat’s headrest and thought the driver might have been impaired.

But when he approached the driver’s side window Monday, the trooper was surprised by what he saw: A young boy wearing a gray Utah Royals soccer hoodie.

“You’re 5 years old — wow!” the trooper, Rick Morgan, said in the dash camera video of the traffic stop. He then asked him, “OK, where did you learn how to drive a car?”

The boy, who was not identified, had managed to drive about 2 to 3 miles from his home before he was pulled over in the southbound lane of Interstate 15 in Ogden, a city about 38 miles north of Salt Lake City, according to authorities.

The highway patrol shared posts of the episode on social media, where it quickly gained attention. Like the trooper, people wondered: How did the boy manage to get so far without injury or damage to the vehicle? Where was he trying to go? And where did he learn to drive?

During a news conference Monday, Morgan said that “when the window came down, I wasn’t quite sure what to think.”

“It absolutely was not what I was expecting when I saw the driver,” he added.

He said the boy was sitting on the front edge of the seat “so that he could reach the brake pedal.” It was not clear how well he could see through the windshield. The trooper helped the child to put the car into park position and to shut it down.

At first, he thought the boy appeared to be 8 or 9 years old.

“But he insisted he was 5, and his family confirmed he’s 5 years old, and he will be 6 next month,” Morgan said.

The boy, who gave short or one-word answers, was on the verge of tears during the stop, he said. The boy explained that he left home after an argument with his mother, according to the highway patrol.

“She told him she would not buy him a Lamborghini,” the highway patrol said in a tweet. “He decided to take the car and go to California to buy one himself.”

One of our Troopers in Weber Co. initiated a traffic stop on what he thought was an impaired driver. Turns out it was this young man, age 5, somehow made his way up onto the freeway in his parents' car. Made it from 17th and Lincoln in Ogden down to the 25th St off-ramp SB I-15.

In the dashcam video, the boy is heard telling the trooper that his sister lives in California and that he was trying to get to her house there. The boy had $3 in his wallet, the trooper said, and was heading on a road toward the state.

“He was all set to make the trip,” Morgan said at the news conference. “It amazed me that when he heard my siren that he did pull over and stop.”

The highway patrol said that the boy’s parents had been at work and that he was with a sibling at home when he took the car. His parents were looking for their son when police reached them.

The keys to the vehicle had been left on a hook at the family’s residence, authorities said. The boy’s parents said “he’d not driven before; this was the first time he’d done anything like this,” according to Morgan.

“They didn’t have any more answers than that,” he said.

Morgan also urged parents, generally, to keep a close eye on their children as best they could. “Kids are kids, and they get an idea in their head and don’t realize what it takes to pull that off, and I think that’s what happened here,” he said. “Young man decided he wanted to go to California and buy a car. He grabbed the keys, and he was off.”

Lt. Nick Street, a spokesman for the highway patrol, said that during his time on the road, he had seen some cases of 12- and 14-year-old children driving cars that surprised him.

Asked about Monday’s episode, he said it was “very shocking that a child, age 5, would know how to drive, get on the freeway and go the right direction to California to his destination.”

As of Tuesday, no charges have been filed in the case, Street said.

“The case is in the screening process,” he said, adding that the Weber County attorney’s office may file charges or give the case to a lesser court in Ogden.

Morgan said that the boy probably realized something was wrong with the situation, though he might not have understood it completely. “I do think he’s probably had a life lesson,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll see him in the situation again soon.”

The highway patrol shared posts of the episode on social media, where it quickly gained attention.  Like the trooper, people wondered: How did the boy manage to get so far without injury or damage to the vehicle?  Where was he trying to go?  And where did he learn to drive?