On what would have been a typical weekday morning, Michelle King’s husband stepped outside about 4 a.m. to go to work and stumbled on a crime scene.
A man with a bucket jumped into a Mercury Mountaineer and sped away as gas poured from the family’s Ford F1-50 onto the concrete.
Not only did they lose a full tank of gas, they would also have to pay $2,000 for repairs.
King was in disbelief. There are always interesting happenings on their dead-end street in Edgewood but this was a first, she said, when I talked to her a week after the incident.
Camera footage from their doorbell showed the man had spent more than an hour under their vehicle drilling small holes in the gas tank.
“He probably got $10 worth of gas. The rest of it was spilling out onto the street,” King said.
After King posted details of the incident on a neighborhood app, residents in other neighborhoods described having been a victim of the same crime and seen the same truck.
With the help of these observant residents, it only took a few days for the Atlanta Police Department to find and arrest Matthew Reznick, of Issaquah, Washington.
It’s unclear what may have been Reznick’s motivations for the crimes he is alleged to have committed, but he isn’t the first person in Georgia suspected of drilling cars for gas when fuel prices have increased.
When a cyberattack took out the Colonial Pipeline for several days and threatened fuel supplies along the East Coast last May, police in Griffin arrested a man accused of drilling holes in the tank of a U-Haul to steal about five gallons of gas.
Drilling gas tanks is an extreme way to deal with the rising gas prices sparked by Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But it is an issue on the minds of many Atlanta residents as they talk about all the ways they might avoid paying more than $4 per gallon of gas right now and whether state and federal leaders will help ease that burden.
As I write this column, state lawmakers are expected to support Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposal to temporarily suspend collection of state fuel tax of 29.1 cents a gallon until May 31, a move he also made during the cyberattack situation in 2021.
In February, Sen. Raphael Warnock and other Democrat senators began advocating for the federal government to suspend collection of the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax until 2023, in response to rising fuel prices.
The average price for regular gas in metro Atlanta was about $4.30 per gallon mid-week, according to Gas Buddy, a price-tracking service. Gas hasn’t been that high in Georgia in more than a decade.
Several friends have confessed to keeping a stash of gasoline in their garages in case of a shortage.
Others have set a price per gallon of gas limit at which they will simply stop driving their cars. Most said $4.50 per gallon feels right, but my guess is that boundary is flexible.
For those who said they would stop driving, alternative forms of transportation such as riding MARTA, walking, carpooling and biking ranked high.
Some people I talked to said they have been looking into purchasing hybrid or electric vehicles but doubted current gas prices would push them to make an immediate decision.
In a group chat on the topic of high gas prices, a North Fulton family that owns one electric vehicle and one gas powered vehicle said they would likely be using the electric vehicle for longer drives. Another person might revise plans for car travel during the upcoming spring break.
King said she would cut back on discretionary spending before taking any drastic measures. “People have knee-jerk reactions … and it compounds the problem,” she said. “I just keep living my life.”
I can also just keep living my life, since my life will continue to function relatively well without having to drive beyond a three-mile radius.
But I think about all the people in metro Atlanta who don’t have that option.
The annual inflation rate in February was 7.2%, the highest level since 1982, and much of that was due to increases in the price of food and fuel.
With gas prices likely to push inflation even higher in the coming months, we need state and federal policy makers to take action now.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and Twitter (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
About the Author
