Micah S. Zirbel didn't get mad when his car was towed, he got even.
And for that, the 20-year-old got arrested. Well, for that and running into someone.
Let's back up: Zirbel was visiting a friend in Laguna
Hills when his 1966 blue Ford Mustang was towed around midnight Thursday.
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Now, it would be a legitimate concern of an owner to want extra care taken in towing one's '66 to the impound lot. Naturally, when Zirbel's friend saw the Mustang being towed, he informed his buddy, and they followed the tow truck to the yard.
Arriving at Beach Cities Towing, 25081 Front St., Lake Forest, Zirbel told the attendant he did not have the small fortune to get his prized car out of lockup, but that he'd like to inspect it to ensure no damage was done in the transport.
But to hear sheriff's deputies tell it, what happened next was straight out of The Dukes of Hazzard. Zirbel allegedly got in the car, put a key in the ignition, started her up, put the pedal to the metal and gunned it toward the front gate, which his friend–the Luke Duke of our tale–had opened on the sly.
Unfortunately for Zirbel–and really unfortunately for a tow yard employee–the Mustang did not fly in the air to avoid hurting anyone like the General Lee. The '66 '86'd the tow yard lady, hitting her, throwing her to the ground, leaving her with cuts and bruises and breaking her arm.
Meanwhile, OC's version of the Duke boys drove to Zirbel's house in the 1900 block of Jasper Hill Road in Lake Forest which–wouldn't you know it?–was the first place deputies went looking for their suspects after the roughed up employee called around 12:47
a.m. Thursday to report she'd been run over.
She later pointed to Zirbel's photo in a lineup placed before her hospital bed at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center. Rather than shrugging their man off as a good ol' boy never meaning no harm, deputies arrested Zirbel on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
The unidentified friend was not arrested, leaving him free to fetch Daisy Duke to keep jailers occupied while Bo, I mean, Micah is sprung.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.