A car parked in the United Methodist Hall parking lot since last academic year was removed recently.
A red Pontiac Grand Prix was on the second level of the Methodist parking garage since the 2017-18 academic year. The car was covered in dust that students wrote messages in.
Tanner Loveless, criminal justice junior, is the owner of the car. The car was placed in the garage last school year after it broke down and had repairs done on it there. The car was unable to be fixed, so it was left in a parking spot for the remainder of the school year, through the summer and into the 2018-19 school year.
OCU Police Chief Jennifer Rodgers said she had been unaware of the car’s existence.
“I sent one of my guys over to the lot and told him to look for a red Pontiac,” Rodgers said. “They sent me a message and said it was caked with dirt, no one had been driving it. It was just left there.”
The officer sent by Rodgers issued a citation to the owner for an expired permit. Loveless was given three days to move his car before OCUPD towed it.
“It just got lost in the shuffle,” Rodgers said. “I guess officers don’t go in that area as much as they should.”
Loveless had received permission from a former campus police officer to leave the car in the garage with an expired 2017-18 parking pass. The car had not received any parking tickets.
Rodgers said the officer shouldn’t have given Loveless permission in the first place.
“It wasn’t ethical to do that,” Rodgers said. “Had I had any idea, I would have towed the car myself.”
The car is no longer in the Methodist parking lot.
Megan Cheng, music sophomore, said she enjoyed seeing the red Pontiac in the parking lot every day.
“It seems like it would be a pain trying to tow it out of there,” Cheng said. “We always have extra spaces in the lot, and I don’t feel like his car being there was hindering anybody. It was actually kind of a tourist attraction.”
Loveless was unavailable to comment last week.
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