A Butler County woman is perplexed at how a dead man managed to get her vehicle towed from a Bowling Green apartment building.

Tiara Brooks had parked her maroon 1999 Chrysler Sebring parked in front of a friend’s apartment at 2050 Rock Creek Road before it disappeared last month, she said.

&#8220I asked everyone at the apartment complex, and they said a wrecker had picked it up,” Brooks said.

Brooks got a call four days later from the Bowling Green Police Department, saying her car was found at Parrish Auto Parts and Recycling at 2151 Old Louisville Road.

&#8220I had called that company repeatedly, and they said they didn’t have the car,” she said. &#8220I can’t understand why it took three days to find the car.”

Once the vehicle was found, Brooks learned it had been given to the wrecker service as a salvage vehicle, she said.

Kentucky law requires that to tow a vehicle for salvage, they receive both a signature and a driver’s license number, said Norris Suggs, general manager for Parrish Auto Parts and Recycling.

&#8220I feel for her , but we were taken advantage of, too,” Suggs said. &#8220We do everything we’re required to do under the law.”

The license number given to the tow truck driver was also false, according to a Bowling Green Police Department report.

The company realized something was wrong when the car got to the lot, he said.

&#8220It was too new and in pretty good shape,” Suggs said. &#8220We put the car in an area where it wouldn’t be too close to anything else and called the police about the owner.”

Brooks complained that her vehicle was damaged.

The wrecker driver, Kyle Wimpee, who brought the vehicle to the Parrish lot, noted the damage in his paperwork before the car was towed.

&#8220We dropped it off in the same place we got it,” Suggs said. &#8220It was in the same condition.”

Such malicious towing happens occasionally to every wrecker service, Suggs said – normally a boyfriend or girlfriend will get mad at their partner, having the vehicle towed from their house and wanting it scrapped as revenge.

&#8220In those situations, we normally can tell and hold the vehicle until the owner comes to get it. The owner then refunds the money for the salvage,” Suggs said. &#8220In this case, the man was adamant he didn’t want any money for the vehicle.”

The company currently pays between $90 to $95 a ton to salvage a vehicle.

Wimpee may have made a mistake by not comparing the signature and driver’s license closely enough, said Officer Jerry Corbitt, public information officer for city police – but the company didn’t do anything illegal by towing the vehicle.

The man who signed for the vehicle to be towed gave the driver a license number and signed the name of Michael Coffer – who was charged with beating his girlfriend to death, and who hung himself at Warren County Regional Jail on May 3.

Brooks was able to name a suspect she thinks had her car towed, but Wimpee didn’t identify the man in a photo lineup.