Woman's stolen minivan crushed by salvage yard

A woman's van is stolen and she is not getting it back the way she left it.  That's because the van was crushed by a salvage yard.

Lanetta Murphy lives in Detroit, but works in Westland six days a week.  She has to have a car to get around, and to see her once perfectly fine van just completely crushed and destroyed is just devastating.

"Took my whole income tax to even pay for the car, and I actually owed $233 more," said Murphy.

Her minivan wasn't much, but it got her where she needed to go.  She only had it for two months when someone stole it, and the past two months with no vehicle have been an absolute nightmare.

"I have no way of getting around, and I'm just now depending on people just to even keep my job."

So when she got the call from Detroit Police saying they found her car, she was ecstatic, that is until she heard how they found it.

"After nine weeks of pain, of calling, and then you tell me it's crushed up."

Someone took Murphy's stolen van to Fritz Enterprises on Detroit's west side to be sold and crushed for a quick buck.

"They started to scrap it, and then he discovered it was stolen."

So they called police, but that was after they had already began crushing Murphy's van.

"I want to know how my car ended up at Fritz and how did you become about crushing it."

So did we, especially since, according to their sign, Fritz doesn't accept stolen vehicles, but employees weren't willing to give an explanation, just an order off the property.  Meanwhile, every day that Murphy's van sits on an impound lot, she is being charged a fee, a fee she can't afford to pay, and she's demanding answers, but no one is talking.

"How you going not talk to me anymore, but you can accept my vehicle from somebody who stole it ... and scrapping it and to crush it and to have crushed it to give it back to me and tell me what?  It wasn't even in an accident," said Murphy.  "You just crushed my whole income tax and it's not fair."

Detroit Police are investigating.  Whoever brought in the vehicle had to provide an I.D. and some paperwork.  We're told Fritz Enterprises has turned that over to Detroit Police, so hopefully that will help them figure out what happened.