A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation told The Daily Caller that a car waiting to transport the president of the think-tank was totaled last week in Washington when a thief stole the Cadillac and crashed it while being chased.
Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, according to chief of staff Derrick Morgan, was not in the car at the time and did not see the theft occur at the Wardman Park Marriot in Northwest Washington, where he was attending a conference.
The driver of the car, Kevin Germany, had left the vehicle on while running the heat and was outside of the Cadillac at the time of the theft, he said.
Witnesses, Morgan said, saw a man jump out of the hedges at the hotel and take off in the car.
Albert Abney, another professional driver, witnessed the incident and chased the thief in his car through the streets of Washington, Morgan said, until the man crashed the stolen vehicle near the intersection of Connecticut and K streets.
While there were no serious injuries, a Mercedes at the intersection was damaged and the black Cadillac owned by the Heritage Foundation was totaled, Morgan said.
Abney, he said, confronted the man who stole the car and helped keep him at the scene of the wreck until police arrived to arrest him.
Morgan said Feulner took a cab back to the Heritage offices. “The key thing for all of us is that nobody was hurt,” Morgan said.