I went to work all day, and had a nice lunch with a friend, so that took my mind off of things. I have calmed down now.
This is what I found out - from his passenger girlfriend, another neighbor who went down to pick her up right after the accident, and his mother, who jumped directly onto the police scanner when she got a brief panicked phone call right after it happened.
He was given a ticken for failing to yield…he was in the left turn lane waiting to go into a gas station and apparently turned in front of the Cavalier, which smashed into the right front of my van. It spun and the rear end hit…something. So there is extensive front-end damage, and some rear end damage too. This all from the other neighbor who went down to pick up the girlfriend and saw my van being loaded onto a wrecker. It may not be totalled, just need a lot of work, which may not be worth doing on a vehicle worth $2500-$3000. It was not driveable. I now know where it was towed to.
The two people in the Cavalier ran - in fact their car was being folllowed by a police officer who witnessed the whole thing. The reason they were being followed? Someone had called in a home invasion nearby and the car and occupants met the description. Other cops were there in seconds and had guns out shouting for the runners to stop. They arrested one, the other got away. My neighbor and his girlfriend waited with the van at the scene.
My neighbor was arrested for, yep, an outstanding warrant on a traffic ticket he got but never paid, in December. Dumbass.
Insurance company needs a police report, which I cannot get until Monday. But it’s probably irrelevant since the people driving the Cavalier had stolen the car, which was not insured. (Insurance retention rate in the city is about 20%, meaning 80% of car owners buy a week or a month’s worth of insurance in order to get the vehicle registered every year, but don’t keep insurance of their vehicles otherwise.)
Also absolutely a good thing that nobody was injured.
I still have no clue WTF he was doing five miles south of here. Apparently they’d just gone to a grocery store (even thought there are several close to here) and the police would not let the girlfriend take anything at all except her purse and ID out of the van. So there’s a bunch of groceries in there merrily freezing away. I suppose I should also be glad that it’s winter and not summer. Better freezing than rotting.
I have to go to the police department on Monday, get a “clearance” or some such form, then go to the tow yard and pay between $300 and $400 to get my van back. If it’s worth getting back. If it’s too damaged, I still have to pay the towing, impound and storage fees and they will give me some sort of salvage value discount.
I left some, uh, rather toxic texts on his cell phone at about 5:30 am. Which is probably in police custody in a manila envelope somewhere. I was utterly livid this morning.
I’ve known this young man since 2006; I’m sure he feels awful (not that I frankly give a shit about how he is feeling) and I know he will be doing all my lawn mowing and deck-building and other stuff on my honey-do list for free, for about 200 hours by my estimate. He’s gormless but very handy (he works as a handyman/roofer/shade tree auto mechanic) and for years I’ve paid him $15 an hour to do handy-man stuff.
Oh, and to why my stuff was in the van - well, that’s what I have a van for. To keep stuff I need on the job, while walking dogs, etc, in. It’s what vans are good for. 
And I do not carry a purse so my wallet and ID stays in the glove compartment of whatever vehicle I am driving - it’s not only locked, but has an alarm system.
And as to the FPO facebook page…I think that started in 2008/2009 when Flint was in the news, yet again, for the number one highest per FBI per capita murder rate in the USA. It’s a small city (about 100K) so the raw numbers don’t approach, say, Chicago…but the per-capita murder rate is astonishing. It’s also in the “top three” for rapes, arsons and fraudulent loan applications.
For the record, I live close enough to Flint to hear the near-constant gunfire on summer nights but am not actually in the city but rather in a somewhat safe, semi-rural enclave.
