Micah Jones, an Oklahoma man, says his auto shop disappeared after waiting a year for his car to be fixed
News
A man is demanding answers after claiming he left his car more than a year ago at an auto shop that appears to no longer exist.
Oklahoma resident Micah Jones dropped his car off at Jones Auto in March of last year after crashing into a tree, but he hasn’t seen the car since, according to KFOR-TV.
Jones claims he was told it would take about 90 days to fix his mangled truck, but now says “the whole story doesn’t really add up” after countless text messages were exchanged between him and the store’s owner, Kirby Gallagher.
Fed up, Jones takes matters into his own hands and makes a trip to the exact auto shop he left his car at, only to arrive at an abandoned building without seeing any signs, people – or his car.
Photos of text messages provided to News 4 at KFOR Oklahoma reveal the cryptic responses Gallagher left after Jones questioned him about when the car would be ready.
“Can I have the car today? Can I have the car today? Car today?” Jones sends a text message to the owner on August 31.
“We got a plan for today at the tag office,” Gallagher replies, to which Jones replies, “A plan for what?”
“Bring the car and pick up two more cars,” a strange text message from Gallagher said.
Jones texted back two more times the next day but did not get a single response from the owner.
Jones told the local news station that he feels Gallagher has tricked him, with excuses after excuses.
Jones says he’s lucky to have friends who let him borrow their cars to drive on occasion.
“People have been very generous. I think I’ve borrowed seven different cars or something. So, I’m very grateful to the people who let me borrow here and there,” Jones said.
Jones has since filed a police whistleblower lawsuit with the Jones and Oklahoma City police departments.
The local news station reached out to Gallagher in hopes of getting any leads on where Jones’ car could be, not to mention the auto shop he supposedly owned.
“We took on more than we could afford, and I hired some employees that I thought were better, but they weren’t. And you know, there’s no excuses. It kind of sucks… I made several promises. Build,” Gallagher reportedly said. “For other people’s actions, it made me look like an idiot…it’s just a stupid mistake.”
“Sometimes it’s not as bad as it looks when they’re all ground up. And I’ve picked out a lot of cars that look worse. I thought the worst that could happen is that we can’t fix it…” “My buddies took it apart. We took it to the tire shop. He tried to pull it out and said: I don’t know. And then we pulled the shop over and were going to try to find another donor car, you know, for the inner frame rails and stuff… I couldn’t find anything… and then I got busy with a bunch of other jobs and kept getting it on the back burner.
