Sleeping Woman Towed In Jeep In FL

Here's the story from the Panama City News Herald:

PANAMA CITY BEACH — A woman who fell asleep in the back of her Jeep woke up in a tow yard Sunday and had to use bolt cutters to get out, she told sheriff's deputies.

The 23-year-old Indianapolis woman had her Jeep parked in front of a tattoo shop on Front Beach Road — and was asleep in her back seat — when a truck from Discount Towing towed her, according to a Bay County Sheriff's Office report.

"She said she woke up inside the tow yard with nobody around," a deputy wrote. "She could not call anybody because her cell phone was dead."

She knocked on doors and windows at the business and didn't get an answer, she said, so she finally found a hammer and a pair of bolt cutters in a company shed and cut her way out of the gate between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

She left the tools behind, the deputy said. The towing company called the Sheriff's Office about 9:45 a.m.

The woman was on her way back to the tow yard when a deputy stopped her, and she had just called her mother, who told her to go back to the yard and call police. She had hand-written directions back to Discount Towing in her Jeep and "did not appear to be deceptive when explaining her account of the incident," the deputy wrote.

The tow truck driver said he didn't check the back seat before towed the Jeep, according to the report.

A call to her cell phone went straight to voicemail Monday.