At 5:45am on Sunday 5 April 2026, four men entered a parking garage at 624 West 43rd Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood and got to work. The keys were in several of the cars. Within minutes they had four vehicles running and were heading for the exit.
What stopped them was George Frimpong Jr.
The parking attendant on duty that morning had only seconds to react. He lowered the metal security gate. The results played out across the next few blocks of Midtown Manhattan in a sequence that, as Jalopnik noted, sounds like it was written for a sketch comedy show.
What happened to each car
The McLaren Artura, a 2023 model valued at between $160,000 and $229,000, made it out before the gate came down. The driver pointed it toward 11th Avenue and accelerated. According to NBC New York, the car travelled less than a block before the driver lost control and smashed it into a pole outside a FedEx building on West 42nd Street. The front end was destroyed and the airbags deployed. The car is most likely a write-off. Forensic teams were later seen dusting it for fingerprints.
The Range Rover Sport did not make it out at all. Frimpong brought the gate down directly onto it. The white 2025 model, worth around $95,000, became wedged under the barrier and had to be left where it was.
The Mercedes AMG G63 and the Volvo XC60 both made it through the gate, though neither escaped unscathed. The Volvo had its windshield smashed and sustained significant damage to the driver's side. The Mercedes showed hood damage. Both were found abandoned on West 43rd Street outside the garage. Once the McLaren had gone into the pole and the Range Rover had been crushed by the door, whoever was driving the remaining two cars made the sensible decision to leave them and run.
All four suspects fled in a grey BMW that had not been taken from the garage. As of the time of writing, no arrests have been made.
Like this? Get the app: iOS | Android
The eyewitness verdict
Midtown food truck owner Ahmed Kharboush watched the McLaren come to grief from the street. He told NY1:
"He try to take the turn over here, and he just smash into the pole. He doesn't know how to drive it, so why he steal it?"
The McLaren Artura produces 671 horsepower from a twin turbocharged V6 paired with an electric motor. It weighs under 1,500 kilograms. Controlling it at speed requires some prior experience with the car and some general ability behind the wheel. Neither appeared to be present.
The owner of the McLaren, who was out getting breakfast at the time of the theft, returned to find it mounted on a kerb with the front destroyed. They told NBC New York:
"I couldn't believe it was my car. I was walking out getting breakfast and then, when I came back, I saw that this looked like, like, like my car."
The man who stopped it
George Frimpong Jr. has been described by local reports as having had seconds to decide what to do and acting immediately. He had no weapon, no backup and no warning. He had a gate control. He used it, and in doing so prevented the clean removal of four vehicles worth a combined figure well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The suspects remain at large. The gate at 624 West 43rd Street was still visibly damaged the following morning when NBC New York visited the scene.
A gang of four men, four luxury cars, one parking attendant, one button. The cars lost. The attendant won. The thieves could not drive.
Sources:
- NBC New York — Crashed in 60 seconds: luxury NYC car heist doesn't get far
- NY1 — Attempted high end car heist in Hell's Kitchen
- Fox 5 NY — Thieves target luxury cars in Hell's Kitchen garage
- Jalopnik — McLaren Artura And Luxury SUVs Smashed In Thwarted NYC Parking Garage Heist
- Yahoo News — McLaren Artura, Mercedes G-Wagen Damaged in Daring Failed NYC Garage Heist