Theft Of Battery-Powered Car Leaves 2-Year-Old Without Wheels

It was a cherry of a car, a shiny candy-red Ferrari racing mobile with the number “5” emblazoned on the side and front.

Dakota Butler barely had his driving legs. He liked to tool around, pedal to the floor. He’d circle the block with his grandpa. He’d show off in his driveway.

Last week, somebody drove off with Dakota’s machine, or at least tucked the toy car under an arm. Nobody’s told Dakota, who’s only 2 years old and still wobbly in the ways of the world.

“I don’t want to say, ‘Bad people came and stole your car,”’ said Dakota’s mother, Kathy Butler. “He’ll learn about that soon enough.

“It’s terrible how you’ve got to tell your children that bad things can happen at your home. This is where he should feel safe.”

The battery-powered car, which cost about $250, was Dakota’s most expensive and largest toy. He received it for Christmas.

It was Dakota’s only gift from his father, Butler said.

“I would have never spent that kind of money,” she said.

The car stayed in the basement at first because Dakota was too small to drive it and the weather was cold.

This summer, he started taking the car out for spins. Dakota liked speed.

“I go fast,” he’d say.

The family stored the car in a breezeway, a gated area between the garage and house.

On July 10, Butler awoke about 3:45 a.m. and walked to the kitchen to get a bottle for Dakota. She saw the breezeway’s gate was open. She didn’t see the car.

Butler put on her shorts and drove around her neighborhood for 40 minutes, looking for her son’s tiny machine. She was angry.

“If they’d have taken something of mine, I wouldn’t have cared,” Butler said.

She couldn’t sleep. At 7 a.m., she called police.

The family called pawnshops and posted fliers in stores in the Indian Trail area. The car hasn’t been found.

“If you have any information, please call 328-5478,” the poster said. “You would make this 2-year-old very happy!”

The poster included two pictures of a smiling Dakota, one of him in his car.

Butler and Dakota live with Butler’s parents and one of her sisters near the corner of Holyoke Avenue and Indian Trail.

Butler can’t afford a new car. She’s working to get off welfare and taking classes through the Single Parent Outreach Connection.

She’s interning at the Spokane Guilds’ School and Neuromuscular Center. She wants to work with children with disabilities.

Butler is hoping to find the car before Dakota realizes it’s gone. If he asks about the Ferrari, she has an answer.

“I’m going to tell him it’s in the shop being fixed,” Butler said.

, DataTimes