A West Boylston man told police his black 2025 Toyota Tacoma vanished from his own driveway early on August 22, after he spent hours using cocaine with an acquaintance he had picked up in Worcester the night before. The truck turned up roughly 10 hours later, unlocked, with the keys still inside, on a Worcester street miles from where it disappeared.
According to a report from News Link Live, West Boylston Police Officer Paul Riley was dispatched to a Sterling Street residence at approximately 5:19 a.m. on August 22 after the resident reported his Tacoma stolen. The man told officers he had picked up Harrison Pelletz in Worcester around 9 p.m. the night before, and that Pelletz, 28, of Upton, brought cocaine back to the house, where the two of them used it together for several hours into the early morning.
The resident said he and Pelletz were the only two people at the house that night. At one point, Pelletz reportedly pressed him repeatedly to take Xanax to help him fall asleep. He said he set his keys on a table near the entrance before finally dozing off around 3 a.m., while Pelletz remained awake. When he woke up roughly two hours later, both his keys and his truck were gone.
Police Scour West Boylston, Issue a Stolen-Vehicle Alert
Officer Riley and Detective Mitchell Rogers responded to the scene and checked the main roads throughout West Boylston for the missing Tacoma, per the same account. Police issued a BOLO alert for the black truck and entered it into the CJIS database as stolen that same morning, while the resident also drove around the Worcester area on his own, searching for the vehicle.
The breakthrough came from a tip. A mutual friend told the resident to check Edgebrook Street in Worcester, and he found the Tacoma there at around 3:30 p.m. — unlocked, with the keys sitting inside. The Worcester Police Department assisted in recovering the vehicle, which was confirmed found before the resident followed up with West Boylston police on August 25.
Officer Points to Access as Key to the Case
Officer Riley said he believed Pelletz was responsible because he was the only other person present at the house and had access to the keys, according to the report. Pelletz was subsequently charged with larceny of a motor vehicle. He was arraigned in Clinton District Court on September 17, pleaded not guilty, and was released on $2,000 cash bail. His next court date is a pretrial hearing scheduled for October 16.
Under Massachusetts law, larceny of a motor vehicle carries stiff potential penalties: up to 15 years in state prison, or up to two and a half years in a jail or house of correction, or a fine of as much as $15,000, according to the Massachusetts General Laws. The same statute notes that evidence a vehicle's identifying number was deliberately altered or destroyed can serve as evidence that a defendant knew the vehicle was stolen.
Case Lands Amid a Statewide Drop in Car Thefts
The alleged theft comes even as vehicle theft trends in Massachusetts have been heading downward. Statewide vehicle theft fell 15% from 2024 to 2025, dropping from 7,518 to 6,393 incidents, according to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau cited by WWLP. A separate accounting from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security put the 2024 total at 7,540 thefts, a figure that does not match the NICB number cited elsewhere, according to the Cape Cod Times.
Nationally, the picture looks similar: 659,880 vehicles were reported stolen in 2025, a 23% drop from the year before and a historic low, per the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). More than 38% of Massachusetts vehicle thefts happen between May and August, the same stretch when the West Boylston Tacoma went missing, and roughly one vehicle is stolen every 37 seconds across the country, according to federal data cited in the same Cape Cod Times report.
Other recent Central Massachusetts cases underscore how varied local vehicle-theft incidents can be. In Auburn, police arrested two Worcester teens after they allegedly fled a traffic stop at speeds over 100 mph in stolen Dodge Challengers, according to MassLive. For now, the West Boylston case remains in the pretrial stage, with Pelletz due back in Clinton District Court on October 16.
