Qatari Sheikh Whose LaFerrari Terrorized Beverly Hills Has Fled The Country
What do you do when your $1.5 million car is caught on video terrorizing a residential neighborhood, then you further piss everyone off by saying you have diplomatic immunity when you really don't? Simple: you get the fuck outta Dodge.
Dodge, in this case, would be Beverly Hills in particular and America in general. Qatari Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al Thani, at last officially linked to the LaFerrari speeding incident as he was reported to be, has apparently fled the country, according to police in Beverly Hills.
Al Thani is a member of Qatar's royal family and a well-known figure in the international racing community. On Thursday police finally confirmed it was his yellow LaFerrari seen blasting through the neighborhood last week.
Problem is, according to the Los Angeles Times, police still don't know exactly who was driving it — and that's a problem when it comes to actually charging and prosecuting someone.
Police say they have been unable to prove who was behind the wheel of the cars. Investigators have not been able to find anyone willing to identify the drivers, Lt. Lincoln Hoshino said.
"No one produced any evidence of who was at the wheel of the two cars," Hoshino said. "The drivers weren't visible on the videos or photographs."
After Al-Thani's LaFerrari was captured on video tearing through the neighborhood — an act that grenaded its engine — he reportedly told police he had diplomatic immunity, something he repeated to a video reporter the following Monday, saying, now infamously:
"He told me verbatim, 'I could have you killed and get away with it,'" Rogers said. "I told him, 'the press is allowed to be here on the sidewalk on a public street.' He said, '(Expletive) America' and threw a cigarette at me."
Nice. But now he's fled the country, and his cars are gone as well. That rented house the drivers retreated to is also now empty. Police Chief Dominick Rivetti said in a news conference yesterday that since the drivers did not have immunity, they could have been prosecuted had the investigation run its course.
Meanwhile, the City of Beverly Hills reportedly communicated their outrage to the Qatari consulate via the U.S. State Department, Rivetti said.
Looks like we won't be seeing those asshats back in America for a while.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.