Seriously, officer, we didn't start anything.
Two armed men attempted to carjack a Corvette Sunday night, Orlando police say, but were unable to figure out how to work the manual transmission.
The Corvette's owner, 51-year-old Randolph Bean, told WKMG-TV he was sitting in the yellow vehicle waiting for his wife to get out of work at the Orlando Regional Medical Center at around 11:20 p.m. He saw two men approaching the car with a gun "drawn and pointing at me."
Bean says they opened the door and forced him out of the vehicle. One man held him on the ground at gun point.
The second man, he says, got into the vehicle and, after some apparent confusion, started screaming, "How do I start the car?" at Bean.
"I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch, because it's a standard transmission," Bean told WOFL-TV.
Bean told WKMG that eventually, one of the men yelled "It's a stick!" At this point, they grabbed Bean's wallet, phone and house keys and fled the scene.
Bean has now stored the Corvette in a hidden spot, and he told WOFL that he has a message for the would-be thieves.
"Guys, turn your life around. You guys have got a lot going for you. Thank you for not taking my life for something silly as a car."
He also noted it's probably for the best that the crime was foiled. "This is a high performance car compared to other cars," he said. "So if they had gotten it, they might have hurt themselves in it."