'Scary situation': Brazen car theft near Montreal captured on camera

The owner of a Montreal-area car dealership says authorities need to crack down on car theft after a brazen theft Monday night was captured on a surveillance camera.

Marc Fournier says two people came to his dealership, Auto Karetta, five minutes before closing to ask for a test drive for a 2016 Mercedes CLA 45 AMG. The employee said it was too late to take it for a spin but agreed to show the couple, a man and a woman, the car.

He said once the car warmed up a bit and the ice was cleared from the windshield, the man who wanted to see the car "just took off" with it.

The dramatic scene was captured on surveillance video, showing the suspect driving off in the lot with the hood fully lifted and then striking the employee. When the car then stopped on Curé-Labelle Boulevard, and the suspect got out to close the hood, the employee ran toward it to try to open the car and was pushed down. 

"So my salesman ran after the vehicle, tried to open the door [but] he got pushed over again in the middle of the street, gets a little bit hurt. Everything happened pretty fast," Fournier told CTV News.

Laval police confirmed Tuesday that they have opened an investigation into the theft and that investigators are looking for a man and a woman who are believed to be in their 30s. No arrests have been made.

Fournier says his employee has a few bruises and was in shock, but is otherwise doing OK after the incident on Monday. More than a dozen friends went looking for the car last evening in Lachine and the West Island with no luck. 

'Someone could have been killed'

According to Fournier, a Mercedes dealership based in the West Island informed him that someone allegedly stole a licence plate from one of their cars early Tuesday morning and bolted it to a car that matched the description of the stolen car.

He said law enforcement officials need to do a better job at preventing and investigating car theft in the Montreal area.

"Stolen vehicles are getting worse and worse," he said.

"The scary situation is that someone could have been killed or severely injured in what happened last night, and honestly, a vehicle, it's metal, it's money, but a life, you can't take it back. My employee was in a real shock last night. We were all in a real shock last night and it has to stop. Something has to happen."

Stolen vehicles at Montreal's Old Port

New numbers by insurance companies show car thefts in Quebec rose by 58 per cent last year.

Victims of car theft say the system needs to be fixed because car thieves are becoming too bold.

Fournier said one of his clients had one of his Dodge trucks stolen in Blainville and was able to track it down with a tracker to a shipping container in the Old Port of Montreal, only to be told that it couldn't be opened to retrieve the vehicle.

Fournier said that was unacceptable.

"Open every container. Slow it down and open every container," he said, because thieves are stealing more luxurious vehicles worth several tens of thousands of dollars.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blames the rise in car thefts on the Trudeau government and what he calls mismanagement of federal ports. He said a Conservative government would increase jail time for car thieves, tighten security at federal ports, and buy more scanners for cargo containers, "to allow for rapid scanning of containers at our 4 major ports Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Rupert. We will purchase 24 of these scanners. Each of them is capable of doing 150 per hour."

The federal government says improvements are coming soon. This Thursday in Ottawa, police and politicians will take part in a summit on car theft.

- With files from CTV News Montreal's Rob Lurie