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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You often hear of dumb criminals whose mistakes lead to their arrests, well that classic tale hits close to home for one metro car owner, who said a would-be car thief left a piece of evidence behind that made it pretty easy to identify him.

The man left his ID card in the car.

FOX 4’s Sean McDowell spoke to the car owner, who can’t believe this mistake.

“It’s a piece of crap. I bought it for $300, and have put like a couple hundred worth of work into it,” said Kaye Lewis. “And the guy is standing there and he says, ‘I’m on drugs, so.'”

When two strangers asked Lewis for a ride on Christmas night, she erred on the safe side and said no. It wasn’t until the next day she made a discovery.

Lewis said she found that same guy’s ID on the floorboard of her ’85 Oldsmobile.

“I looked down and I saw a wallet on the ground,” Lewis recalled. She figures the guy must’ve followed her on foot as she and her boyfriend drove away.

“It was an ID with a picture matching the guy that I saw the night before,” she said. “It was absolutely the guy.”

Lewis said she parked the car on the street after spending Christmas evening at the movies. On Monday morning, she found the ignition switch on her steering column had been broken off.

“I think that they were mad that I didn’t give them a ride so they were like, ‘well, let me just get my own ride,'” she said.

The ID belongs to a man who lives in Independence. FOX 4 has chosen to blur out his name and face.

Toby Brock, Lewis’s boyfriend, said it’s stunning that the man would be so sloppy.

“He’s a pretty dumb criminal there,” Brock said.

“It’s such a hilarious classic stupid criminal story. Felt like something out of a movie. When I found the wallet, I was literally looking around like, ‘am I being punked?'” Lewis said.

She said she stopped short of calling the guy for fear that he’d make more trouble for her.

Besides, she got her car back. She said she plans on driving the wagon until it can’t go any more.

Lewis said police can’t do much to help her since nothing was actually stolen from the car.