Mercedes-Benz of Collierville employee arrested at bar in customer’s car
by: Zaneta Lowe
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When it comes to cars, Kimberly Porter is loyal, one of those people who doesn’t play about her ride.
“I love cars, I love to take care of my car,” Porter told WREG, saying her last four cars have been Mercedes.
Back in December, though, Porter ran into some trouble with her C300 AMG.
“I got bad gas, I got gas and my car started idling on the interstate,” said Porter.
That was the second week of December. Porter’s car was towed to Mercedes-Benz of Collierville and was still in for repair more than a month later, on Jan. 16, when she noticed something strange.
“I was at home in the bed and got a notification from my GPS that my car was moving,” said Porter. She didn’t think much of it and wondered if something was wrong with the app, until she received another notification.
“It started moving at seven o’clock p.m., on a Friday night,” she said.
Porter shared screenshots of her tracker’s position history showing her car on the street by Collierville Mercedes until 5:59 p.m., then in Cordova some two hours later. Just before 8:30 p.m., the location shows 2670 North Germantown Parkway, which is the address for J. Alexander’s restaurant.
“So then it pinged again at 12:14 at TJ Mulligan’s, and that’s when I got up out of the bed and drove to TJ Mulligan’s in my loaner vehicle, and my car was sitting there,” Porter said.
After arriving to the parking lot of TJ Mulligans on Houston Levee, Porter saw her Mercedes. She used her spare key to unlock it, then called police.
“I’m thinking somebody stole my car from Mercedes,” she said.
Porter said after using the non-emergency number and speaking with dispatch, police arrived.
“They unlocked it, asked me if a coat that was inside was mine. I said no, so they took it out, and the gentleman’s ID was inside the coat pocket, his passport,” Porter explained.
That’s when Porter said she got her first clue about who was driving her car.
“One of the police officers was like, ‘I know this guy. He works at Mercedes,’ and I instantly got pissed,” Porter said.
Because that’s when reality set in. It wasn’t a thief who’d stolen her car from the dealership, after all, but rather someone at the dealership who’d taken her car.
Porter said, “So you’re telling me that there’s a worker at Mercedes driving my car. So, they forced me to get back in my loaner vehicle. I had to sit there until they went inside to bring him out and they brought him out in handcuffs.”
Porter said the technician told police he had permission to drive her car, but she says when MPD called a service manager, he said that wasn’t true.
“He said ‘No, he’s not supposed to be in your car,’ and so I said yes, I would like to press charges and that’s when they arrested him,” Porter explained.
Derrick Nguyen was detained by Memphis Police until Collierville Police arrived to take him to jail, where he was booked and charged with theft of property.
Porter told the WREG Investigators, “I take my car to the dealership because I trust the dealership. This is where I’m at, at one o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting outside TJ Mulligan’s because he’s outside joyriding on a date with somebody else in my car.”
Nguyen was also drinking, according to court records obtained by WREG. The CPD officer wrote, “Derrick Nguyen was intoxicated when he was taken into custody as he had the odor of intoxicating beverages emanating from him.”
Porter added, “God forbid, he had a wreck or killed someone. He was drinking.”
Then Porter says, things went from bad to worse when a representative from the dealership called her the following day, and said her car was ready and she needed to pick it up immediately.
“They literally told me, ‘If you don’t have our loaner vehicle back here by 6 o’clock, we’ll report it stolen,’” she said.
Porter says that was after they’d asked her to drop the charges against Nguyen in a conversation she had with an executive at the dealership.
“He said that, ‘We really need you to drop these charges against our employee. He’s a really good kid.’ I said, excuse me?” Porter said.
Porter says she pressed to find out why Nguyen was in her car after hours.
She said the general sales manager told her that repair orders, signed by customers, authorize technicians to drive the vehicles to diagnose the problem, and it’s something they do all the time.
She told WREG she was shocked by the response, replying, “You do what all the time? You drive people’s cars all the time? You bar hop all the time? Like, it’s not ok. He wasn’t just test-driving it to see if it was working. He was out over five hours.”
In addition to the theft charge, Nguyen is also facing a civil case filed by Porter against him and the dealership. Kevin Snider is her attorney.
Snider said he has concerns that Kim isn’t the only person this possibly could have happened to.
“When you have a dealership stand behind what, in my opinion, is criminal behavior of an employee, there’s no question in my mind that this has occurred before,” he said.
Snider also has some advice for all consumers taking their car in for repairs.
“I would caution anybody that puts their car in any facility, find out what the details are. Make a specific instruction when you get there and say, hey, I don’t want you driving my car unless you call me first,” Snider added.
Porter told WREG she never signed a repair order because her car was towed to the dealership.
“I just feel like if I didn’t have my third-party GPS, I would have never known,” said Porter.
Our team reached out to Mercedes-Benz of Collierville to ask about their policies, whether Nguyen was still employed, and to get some other answers.
The general sales manager, Harold Williams responded by email and said, “At this point we’re unable to respond because this is an active case right now. Once the case is settled and we have more details, we will be more than happy to address your concerns.”
About Post Author
