Story By: John Feng, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

Video Credit: AsiaWire

A motorist who called police to say his car had been stolen while he was paying for fuel was left red-faced when he learnt it had rolled away because he had forgotten to put on the handbrake.

The bungling driver, surnamed Zhang, had stopped at the Yanling Service Area on the Pingjiang-Rucheng Expressway and called police in Zhuzhou in Central China’s Hunan Province minutes after parking his car.

Authorities heard the frantic driver explain that his vehicle vanished from the petrol station where he had left it only minutes earlier on 8th January.

The police dispatched Yanling County officers to the scene, but they received a second call from the motorist less than 10 minutes later saying he had found it again.

Picture Credits: AsiaWire

Zhang said: “I went to buy a can of Red Bull and my car was gone when I came back. I thought it had been stolen, so I called the cops.

“But when I checked CCTV footage, I saw the car rolling away on its own right after I had got out. 

The video shows Zhang’s red car rolling straight through the service area’s empty car park, where it eventually struck a bollard more than 100 metres (328 feet) later.

Investigators, who say Zhang’s car sustained about 3,000 RMB (344 GBP) in damage, determined that he had forgotten to put on the handbrake when parking at the filling station.

He was fined 1,000 RMB (114 GBP) for his blunder and will also be made to pay for damage done to the service area’s bollard.