Flooded vehicle had expired tag: License plate had been switched on car found in creek
Published 6:14 am Saturday, August 27, 2016
Interim police chief Gene Crosby said Bogalusa police are no closer to figuring out how a Porsche Boxster ended up in the Bogue Lusa Creek days after a fisherman discovered it on Tuesday.
The car has a Texas license plate and Texas registration, though the registration expired in 2011 and Crosby said the plate doesn’t match the car.
Crosby said he’s seen instances where a plate was switched for benign reasons.
“That throws another switch in there,” he said. “It’s not common, but it’s not uncommon.”
He said generally someone will switch a plate if the tag is expired and they have a second car that doesn’t run but has good tags.
However, Texas plates don’t include tags. Those are affixed to the windshield in that state.
In addition, Crosby said the key was in the ignition, in the on position and the car was in gear. However, whoever put the keys in the ignition didn’t keep the Porsche’s key on a key ring with any other keys.
When it was found, it was fully submerged and turned over on its roof.
Crosby said he didn’t know Friday morning whether an owner had been located with the vehicle identification number information.
Crosby said he didn’t know exactly how long the car had been underwater.
“(The investigating officer) said it looked like the car had been in the creek for a while. I don’t know how long ‘a while’ is,” he said.
With an owner as yet unknown and without any way of knowing how the car got into the creek, Crosby said he’s not even sure a crime was committed.
“We just have a suspicious vehicle found in a creek,” he said. “It doesn’t look like anyone was in it. We don’t know how it got in the creek … You’d think that someone who was in the vehicle, they would have called the police. It’s just a mystery I guess.”