Ocean Beach man’s car held hostage in Mexico

By Perla Shaheen

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    OCEAN BEACH, California (KGTV) — Ethan Johnson likes to work under the hood of a car.

“I fix things when I can to save money where I can,” Johnson said.

More than a year ago, he found a 1993 Honda Prelude in a junkyard and made that his next project.

“Kind of a rare old car,” he said.

Johnson says it took thousands of hours to get it up and running, and he documented the process on Instagram.

“A lot of junkyard runs going to find and pick and choose the parts I wanted,” he said.

Last Monday, Johnson says he woke up to find his car stolen.

“To have it all just taken away with nothing to show for it was really gut-wrenching,” he said. “A couple of days later, I get a message on Instagram from a guy who has my car.”

After some time of messaging back and forth, the man told Johnson to pay him $1,000 for his car. When Johnson declined, the situation got ugly.

“He sent me vanishing videos of them tearing my car apart,” he said. “It was like this messed up hostage video.”

Now, Johnson takes the battery out of his other car every day out of fear that the same thing could happen again. He says he filed a police report and is waiting for some good news.

“With the amount of time and effort and love I poured into that vehicle,” he said. “Even if I got another Prelude, it would be like starting over again.”

Ethan Johnson started a GoFundMe to make up for the lost time and money.

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