“Dang, I will get the insurance in the future!”
A woman’s Charleston vacation turned into a nightmare involving a shattered kneecap, stolen keys, and a deadly car accident.
What started as a simple decision to decline rental insurance spiraled into an unimaginably chaotic trip.
In a trending video, Julia (@rootedwithjulia) shared the unbelievable story of her Charleston, South Carolina trip from three years ago.
The saga began at the rental car counter when she made what seemed like a reasonable decision at the time.
“When we got there, they’re like, ‘Do you want the extra insurance?’ And I looked at my mom and I said, ‘Why would I do that?’” Julia recalls in the video.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Notorious last words.
That first night set an ominous tone. After leaving a restaurant, Julia noticed a man standing nearby and had an inexplicable feeling that something was about to happen. She started walking backwards to keep up with her mom and sister while watching him. The man suddenly collapsed to the concrete, confirming her unsettling premonition. The incident shook her so badly that she went to a bar afterward and immediately started crying.
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“I call my husband and I say, ‘I wanna come home. I think something bad is going to happen. I just don’t wanna be here anymore,’” she says.
The next day brought an even more devastating turn of events. Julia and her mom were at the hotel pool in November, taking advantage of the 85-degree weather. The pool was positioned downstairs, and they were the only ones there. When her mom got up to walk around, disaster struck.
“She falls. I go to help her off the ground. Her kneecap is gone, y’all, literally shattered. It looked like something out of a scary movie,” Julia explains.
Julia admits she doesn’t handle emergency situations well and began screaming for help. Since the hotel staff was all the way upstairs, she ran back and forth in a panic, trying to get assistance while also gathering her mom’s belongings since she was only in a bathing suit.
After the ambulance arrived and took them to the hospital, her mom made the decision to bandage up the injury and catch their flight home the next morning rather than have surgery in Charleston.
Julia spent the rest of the day caring for her mom, lifting her to use the bathroom, changing her, and packing all their bags. By the next morning, she was completely sleep-deprived but ready to finally go home.
The chaos wasn’t over yet. Julia went downstairs with all their luggage, planning to push her mom in a wheelchair to the car. She had parked in the same spot every day to make the car easy to find, but this time the vehicle wasn’t there. After walking laps around the parking lot unsuccessfully, she called her sister for help.
Her sister suggested using the key fob’s panic button to locate the car. When Julia reached into her purse, she made a horrifying discovery.
“Guess what’s not in my purse? My keys are literally gone,” she says.
She realized she must have left them at the pool. The next morning, she called the police to report the missing vehicle.
“The very next thing this police officer says to me on the phone is that car actually just got reported to be in a three-car accident with a head-on collision and someone died,” Julia recounts.
An investigator arrived and informed her that while her car wasn’t the vehicle in which someone died, it was still on the run, and police didn’t know the driver’s location. With time running out before their flight, Julia spotted a trolley pulling up to the Marriott and rushed to ask if they could get a ride to the airport. They barely made the flight.
“I gave mom a Xanax, a pain pill, two glasses of wine, kissed her on the forehead, and just prayed that was the cocktail to have her sleep through the entire trip home,” she says.
Four days after returning home, Julia received a call from the investigator with news that they had apprehended the suspect. The stolen rental car had been found, severely damaged, parked at a random business. When the business owner called the police about the abandoned vehicle, officers located a man walking on a nearby road in a remote area.
The suspect had kept Julia’s keys on him, which directly linked him to the crime. Despite the arrest occurring three years ago, Julia reveals that the case still hasn’t reached a conviction.
Julia believes the theft was an inside job. She suspects that Marriott employees witnessed her frantic response to her mom’s injury and saw them leave in the ambulance, then found the keys Julia had left at the pool.
“I’m 99.9% sure when mom shattered her kneecap and I was in full-blown freakout mode that some Marriott employees saw us get on this ambulance and found our keys, passed the keys off, and there was just an opportunist there who took the opportunity,” she says in the video.
When the investigator questioned hotel employees who worked that day about suspicious activity, they reported seeing someone wearing socks on his hands trying to open car doors. Julia found this revelation particularly frustrating.
“Here’s the beef that I have with that story, though. If they saw that, why did they never report that? Why didn’t they get their manager? Why didn’t they call the police? They just let it happen,” she says.
When a rental car is stolen, the situation can become financially complicated for the renter, especially if they declined additional insurance coverage. According to Thrifty, renters must immediately report the theft to local police and contact the rental company’s emergency line.
Rental charges continue to accrue until the vehicle’s VIN or license plate is listed in the National Crime Information Center database by police (at least if you rent with Thrifty).
The financial liability often depends on the circumstances of the theft.
Revirent24 notes that if a vehicle was left unattended with keys inside, the rental agency may not take responsibility, and the customer could be held directly liable for negligence. Most rental agreements include insurance clauses covering theft, but these policies typically come with deductibles that remain the customer’s responsibility.
MAT Car Rental advises renters to review their personal auto insurance policies, as some provide coverage for rental vehicles. However, without proper coverage, renters may face charges for the cost of the vehicle itself, as well as any fees associated with the theft.
“Dang, I will get the insurance in the future!” a top comment read.
“I am so invested now. I need to hear the rest,” another said.
Motor1 reached out to Julia for comment via TikTok direct message and comment. We’ll update this if she responds.
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