Teenager who stole more than 130 Subarus tells KHQ he did it for ‘the rush’

A teenager who admitted to stealing more than 130 Subarus over a three-year period – including roughly 30 in the past three months alone – says he did it for the thrill.

Speaking to KHQ reporter Peter Maxwell this week, 19-year-old Christian Normand said he liked “the feeling of, like, possibly getting caught or the feeling of like, I don’t know, the rush of doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.”

Normand was already on the police’s radar, the station reported, having first begun stealing cars at the age of 16. So when Subarus started disappearing this summer, Normand made the shortlist of the Spokane Police Department’s Vehicle Theft Task Force.

He had been previously charged with stealing the cars, and had been in jail until July.

“The intelligence analyst and the anti-crime team took a harder look at that, to look at some of the people we had previously arrested for stealing those types of vehicles,” Spokane police Capt. Brad Arleth told KHQ.

His most recent charges come after he and two accomplices stole a “bait vehicle” to which police had attached a GPS tracking unit, police told Maxwell. They were located and arrested shortly after

Normand told KHQ that after boosting a car, he’d drive around “until I felt like it was dangerous for me … if I didn’t want to get caught.”

His technique? Pick the lock and turn the ignition with a broken-off piece of garden rake tine.

“I heard about the rake thing one day, and I didn’t believe it. I ended up trying it, and at first, I couldn’t figure it out … but I figured it out,” he told Maxwell.

He said older model Subarus – particularly those with worn keyholes – were easier to break into and start.