An ambulance vanished from outside a senior center in Highland Park, Michigan, while two EMTs were still inside treating a patient — and officers caught it roughly 15 to 20 minutes later, undamaged, on the other side of the municipal line in Detroit. One person was arrested in connection with the theft, though the suspect's identity has not been publicly released.
The AmeriPro ambulance was taken near Second Avenue and Manchester Parkway in Highland Park, according to CBS News Detroit. Officials said two AmeriPro employees were treating a patient when the rig was taken out from under them, and the company told the station the ambulance had been left running so EMTs could keep equipment powered while working the call. Officers ultimately pulled the ambulance over near Grand River Avenue and the Lodge Freeway in Detroit, according to the same report.
Officials tracked the ambulance through a built-in tracking system as it crossed from Highland Park into Detroit, per the station's account. That kind of GPS integration with computer-aided dispatch is standard across emergency response agencies nationally, allowing fleet systems to feed exact location coordinates directly to responding police units, as Hoodline has previously reported. The rig was recovered undamaged, and the patient still made it to the hospital.
Why the Chase Crossed City Lines So Fast
Highland Park is a 2.97-square-mile enclave completely surrounded by Detroit, a quirk that dates back to the city's 1918 incorporation as an independent municipality even as Detroit grew around it, according to WDET 101.9 FM. That tiny footprint means any pursuit originating there almost immediately spills into Detroit jurisdiction, requiring quick coordination between local police, Detroit officers, and dispatchers tracking the stolen vehicle in real time.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said a stolen ambulance can pose a major public safety concern, since the vehicle can access places a normal car cannot, per the same account from the station. That concern echoes a broader worry from state health officials that emergency vehicles carry credentials and equipment potentially allowing unauthorized access to restricted municipal or hospital zones, as noted in the report.
A Pattern of Ambulance Thefts Across Metro Detroit
The Highland Park incident is far from an isolated case in the region. Just days earlier, Hoodline reported that a woman took a Star EMS ambulance from outside McLaren Oakland Hospital in Pontiac, claiming she needed it to rescue an overdose victim, before she was arrested nearby and charged with felony Unlawful Driving Away of an Automobile. And in October 2025, a 33-year-old man was charged after stealing an active ambulance from an Oakland County crash scene while a paramedic and patient were still inside, eventually crashing into another vehicle, according to a report from WDIV Local 4 shared on Facebook.
AmeriPro Health, the company whose rig was taken in Highland Park, has been expanding its footprint across Wayne County after landing municipal EMS support contracts with the City of Detroit and the City of Lincoln Park following its August 2024 acquisition of Rapid Response EMS, per BridgeDetroit. Private ambulance providers like AmeriPro frequently supply supplemental rigs during peak emergency response hours, a role that puts more vehicles on the street and, apparently, more targets for opportunistic theft.
What Charges Could Follow
Under Michigan Compiled Laws Section 750.413, Unlawful Driving Away of an Automobile is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison for taking and driving away another person's vehicle without authority, according to Grabel & Associates. Unlike standard larceny charges, Michigan's UDAA law does not require prosecutors to prove the suspect intended to permanently keep the vehicle. Shelton Legal Services notes that prosecutors also have the option of pursuing misdemeanor joyriding under MCL 750.414, a lesser charge carrying a maximum of two years in prison and a $1,500 fine, in cases lacking the specific elements required for the full felony.
It remains unclear whether the AmeriPro ambulance was equipped with the anti-theft idle-lock systems mandated under the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services' updated Ground Vehicle Standards, which took effect in July 2022 and require devices that automatically engage when an ambulance is placed in park. Those systems are designed to let HVAC and medical equipment keep running without allowing the transmission to shift out of park without a key. Whether such a system was bypassed, disengaged, or simply absent from this rig has not been addressed publicly, and it is not yet known what formal charges Wayne County prosecutors will file once the suspect's identity is released.
