The call came in just after 9:30 PM.
A local resident, returning home from a late shift, noticed the car hadn’t moved since the afternoon. Something about it unsettled him enough to report it. He couldn’t explain why. “Just a feeling,” he said.
Dispatch sent a patrol unit.
Officer Karim Benali had responded to hundreds of calls like this before—abandoned vehicles, minor breakdowns, harmless situations that rarely led to anything more than a tow truck request. As he drove down the quiet road, headlights slicing through the darkness, he expected nothing different.
He was wrong.
