Colton Police say they recovered 350 boxes of Hot Wheels early Thursday, and the department’s own video opens on the evidence: a stack of cardboard cartons, each marked with a Mattel logo and the words “Hot Wheels Cars,” piled beside a patrol SUV. The department put the total at $54,000. Divided evenly, that works out to about $154 a box.
The arrest, police say, followed a call at about 3 a.m. about trains being robbed. According to a post by the Colton Police Department, the suspect was booked into West Valley Detention Center on charges of burglary (Penal Code 459), possession of stolen property (496(a)) and grand theft (487). The post does not name him. Those are charges, not findings; no conviction has been reported.
What we know comes from that post and the 53-second video attached to it, which the department edited, captioned and set to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.” We reviewed the video in full. What follows is what the footage and its captions show, not independent confirmation of anything that happened off camera.
What the footage shows
After the boxes, a caption renders a 911 exchange. The call-taker says, “Colton Police. Do you have an emergency?” The next caption reads, “Yeah. They’re robbing the trains down here at the end of Maple St.” The captions do not identify the caller. Over that line, the video shows a line of freight cars alongside a track in the dark.
Body-camera timestamps then begin at 3:04 a.m. on Oct. 22 (the stamps carry a −0700 offset, Pacific daylight time). At 3:05, a caption over the footage reads, “I’m parked on 7th and La Cadena,” followed by “by the bridge.” Another caption refers to a black Silverado. By 3:08 a.m., an in-car camera shows a pickup with its taillights lit ahead of the patrol vehicle, emergency lights flashing around it. At 3:12 a.m., the body camera shows a man standing with his hands on his head beside a dark pickup.
What the post leaves out
The department’s post never says where the toys came from. The video’s 911 call and captions point to a freight train near the end of Maple Street, and NBC Los Angeles reported that police believe the cars were stolen from a train. The post itself does not say so. It also does not identify the railroad, the owner of the cargo, the suspect, or a court date.
One geographic footnote: La Cadena Drive, where that caption places an officer, is also the street where the Colton Police Department headquarters sits, at 650 N. La Cadena Dr., according to the department’s Facebook page. The footage does not show whether the stop happened at that intersection, so we will not claim it did.
The department has not said what happens next. For now, the most remarkable thing on the record is the stack itself: 350 matching boxes, each labeled with exactly what is inside.
Which is stranger: 350 boxes of Hot Wheels walking off a train at 3 a.m., or a police department cutting the arrest video to “Crazy Train”?
Images: Colton Police Department. Frames from video the department released on Facebook, cropped by The Auto Wire.