The Nyíregyháza District Prosecutor’s Office has charged a man who allegedly took two passenger cars without permission in June and drove them for several hundred kilometres. During a police pursuit, he swam across the Szamos River twice.
According to the indictment, the young man had been banned from driving only two weeks earlier. On the night of June 18, 2026, he took a car from the yard of a house in Levelek. He lifted the gate, started the vehicle with a key left inside and drove towards Budapest.
He refuelled in Nyíregyháza and, on his way back the next morning, near Dunakeszi. He left both petrol stations without paying. The car later broke down at the Ecséd motorway rest area, so he abandoned it.
Around noon, the man reached Ófehértó and got into a parked car that had been left unlocked. He started it with the key inside and headed towards Romania. He refuelled in Apagy without paying, too. Police tried to stop him near Győrtelek, but he fled.
The car suffered a puncture near Panyola. The man got out, ran into a nearby forest and swam across the Szamos. Police were waiting for him in Szamosszeg; when he saw them, he swam back across the river and fled towards Panyola, where he was arrested.
The prosecutor’s office charges him with unlawful appropriation of a vehicle, theft and driving while disqualified. It is seeking an enforceable prison sentence and bans on holding public affairs and driving. The attached photograph shows one of the occasions when he allegedly refuelled without paying.
