The gutsy 5-year-old who took his parents’ car with $3 in his pocket and a dream to buy a Lamborghini finally got to ride in the luxury sports car. This time, though, he wasn’t driving.
“He was so happy,” the boy’s 16-year-old sister, Sidney Estrada, told CNN. “You could see his face glow up after the trauma that he’d gone through.”
After the boy’s escapade made international headlines, the family received an offer from a local businessman.
The businessman, Jeremy Neves of Orem, Utah, offered the boy — Adrian Zamarripa — a spin in a matte black, two-seater Huracan.
The family took up Neves on his offer to drive Adrian around the block on Tuesday, the day after he was returned home. He took turns sitting in his sister’s and mother’s laps while Neves drove.
“By taking him for a ride, I could bring his dream a little closer and show him that it’s possible,” Neves, who owns a mobile phone company, Xcite Satellite, told CNN in an email. “After all, I was a lot like this kid growing up and I turned out alright!” “
The boy told the Utah Highway Patrol that he fled his home in his parents’ car after his mother told him she wouldn’t buy him a Lamborghini, the agency tweeted. He took the keys to the car without his family’s knowledge, hopped in their Dodge Journey and made it as far as the interstate before Utah Highway Patrol pulled him over.
The highway patrolman initially thought the child was an impaired driver since he was swerving in and out of lanes at just over 30 mph, Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Nick Street told CNN affiliate KSL.
Adrian left with a plan — to drive from Ogden, Utah, to California and buy the coveted sports car with $3. A Lamborghini can cost more than $200,000, so he “might’ve been short the purchase amount,” the highway patrol said in a tweet.
It’s up to the local prosecutor to decide whether to file charges against his parents, KSL reported.
But Estrada, his sister, told CNN that their parents were at work while she supervised him. Adrian left and took the keys without telling anyone, but her parents immediately left their jobs when they found out he was missing, Sidney said.
He was gone for 30 minutes. Sidney and her parents feared the worst. The boy broke down when he saw them, too, she said.
“He understands he did something wrong,” Sidney said. “He knows not to do it again. He learned his lesson.”
Sidney said her family has no idea where her little brother learned to drive a real car, though as a baby, he could reverse his child-sized electric car with one hand.
His trip in the Lamborghini was nice, Sidney said — but his parents have grounded him and upped his chores as punishment. (CNN)