According to reports, Sean Monroe of Jefferson County, Alabama was arrested for allegedly holding up a repossession agent in an attempt to get his Chevrolet Camaro back.
Chief Deputy Randy Christian stated that Jefferson had held the repo agent at gun point, demanding that he drop the Camaro. Following the demands, the repo agent dropped the car off in the middle of a roadway, causing an accident to occur when an oncoming FedEx truck traveling on Minor Parkway struck the Chevrolet sports car. Officers responded to the report at around 12:30 AM local time on December 2nd.
While officers were at the scene of the incident, they were informed of the robbery and saw that a man matching the description of the suspect was also at the scene, as the registered owner of the Camaro, Monroe was then positively identified as the man who had committed the robbery.
The repo agent had gone to the Center Point Substation to report the robbery, which is how law enforcement was able to identify and arrest Monroe. The identity of the repossession agent was not released in the reports. They told law enforcement that he had successfully picked up the Camaro and was driving along Minor Parkway when he was force to stop by a car that pulled in front of him and blocked his path. Deputy Christian told the press that in the report it states that a  “black male suspect got out of the car, pointed a gun at him [the victim] and told him to ‘drop the car’.” The repossession agent then left the Camaro sitting in the road and drove off, with the suspect following him for a short distance. It was after this point that the agent went to the station to make the report.
Monroe faces a charge of first-degree robbery, and is currently being kept in the Jefferson County Jail with bond set at $25,000. The way the news report was written and Deputy Christian’s remark that, “If he wanted the car that bad you would think he would just pay the payments,” would lead one to believe that Monroe has already been proven guilty. Interestingly enough, a friend of his left a comment on the site where this news report was published, adding some more pieces to the puzzle.
Apparently, Monroe is a well-known hair-stylist in the Birmingham area. We’ve inserted a portion of the friend’s comment below;
Second he can pay his car note because he drives a 2015 Mercedes. Â He bought the car for someone else in his name who didn’t have credit to get one on their own. Â He had only recently learned himself that the person had not been making the payments. Â So he then took the car back in his possession to catch up the payments when this happens. Â He DID NOT HAVE A GUN !!! So someone asked the question why the repo agent didn’t have a gun, well I ask why didn’t he have a cell phone to call the police instead of driving all the way to the other side of town to make a report.
The comment also goes on to say that the repo agent had “dropped the car in the middle of a busy intersection” after Monroe had shown him receipt for payment, and Monroe then followed the agent to tell him to bring the Camaro back to his home. Monroe gives up on this, and returns to the Camaro, where he is arrested and detained. Reality TV can’t top this one.
The GMAuthority Take
We won’t speculate and pretend to act like we know who is right and who is wrong here, all we’re saying is that perhaps this needs to be looked at more arbitrarily. If Monroe is telling the truth, and is the actual victim here, then that would mean the repossession agent should have been arrested and detained since federal law states that repossessors are not to “breach the peace?”
What’s your take on this, who do you think is telling the truth? Talk to us in the comment section below.
Comments
Repo men recover property. Period. They don’t negotiate. That time already passed.
Remember how in the movie Office Space, there was the banner “Is this good for the company?”
Perhaps for GM Authority, a better banner would be “Is this newsworthy to General Motors?”
Well, what is “newsworthy?” (Via Google) :
adjective
noteworthy as news; topical.
“you had to cover a lot of ground to find anything newsworthy”
synonyms: interesting, topical, notable, noteworthy, important, significant, momentous, historic, remarkable, sensational
I’d say this story hits most of those synonyms as well. I’d also say that GM – an American auto manufacturer – would be directly connected when it is their product that is at the core of this societal issue. (Yes, societal)
We all love cars, or else we wouldn’t be on this page. That said, if I can shine light on something through my passion for cars I certainly will. I am, after all, a journalist. To answer your question, I’m not sure how newsworthy this would be to GM itself, but we don’t write for GM – we write for you.
(Google, again) : Journalism is gathering, processing, and dissemination of news, and information related to news, to an audience. The word applies to the method of inquiring for news, the literary style which is used to disseminate it, and the activity (professional or not) of journalism.
Am I wrong in suspecting that you wouldn’t have made this comment if I hadn’t posed the article in this manner and simply recycled the information the way it was presented in the original article? We’ve covered similar stories, and this is the first time I’ve seen “newsworthiness” questioned.
“I’m not sure how newsworthy this would be to GM itself, but we don’t write for GM – we write for you.”
And that’s why people are giving me so much green for posting. We (the readers) are here to read about GM. Not about what two people’s squabble that has nothing to do with GM products, other than it’s being done over a GM product of no major historical significance.
And I have complained about GMA covering articles like this in the past.
Our ratio of “green” seems to be even – so I’m not sure how valid that point is. Beyond this, you are trying to make a completely subjective point stand as a fact – that every single reader visiting this page shares your understanding and doesn’t see this as a newsworthy post.
Historical significance? So now something is only newsworthy if it’s historical?
You read our site for your own reasons. Our goal is to cover ANYTHING and EVERYTHING GM, which includes breaking news stories, and stories that make us reflect as people. Regardless of how you see the link to GM, the fact is the link exists.
You think one is more newsworthy than the other – this isn’t everyone’s reality. This is your opinion as a single reader.
Also, “I’m not sure how newsworthy this would be to GM itself” means I do not know how newsworthy GM as an entity would find this – my guess is that they would be interested in hearing the outcome of an alleged crime surrounding their product.
This doesn’t negate the fact that there is a link here…
I’ll agree, it is not an article discussing the up and coming technologies GM is offering or what the world has decided to swap an LS1 into now, but I mean it IS still a GM product. One of the biggest parts of the car world is relating to those who own/are interested in similar cars. (i.e. most BMW owner’s are complete d-bags, and they relate to each other on that level, hah)
But hell, I enjoyed reading it. All the legal issues aside, it is interesting to see what lengths someone went through to get “his” car back. A GM product, a GM product that he obviously had some attachment to or he wouldn’t of given two shits if the Repo guy took it away (or paid off his friend’s debt for that matter).
And I mean, you clicked on the article, and read it. The title clearly states it is a story about a repossessed Camaro.