Liza Campero’s 14-year-old brother will at least have to go the rest of the year without his cell phone, PlayStation 4 and the door on his bedroom.
But the high school freshman from El Paso, Texas, rides into his punishment on a wave of social media attention after he went joyriding in his mother’s new BMW last week.
In a series of now viral tweets, Campero filmed her furious mother as she intercepted the boy on the road like a hawk and whipped him with a belt near oncoming traffic.
The boy planned to sneak out with the car to see his girlfriend. But it appears he underestimated his mother’s innate tracking ability.
“[My brother] was embarrassed at first,” she said. “But he went back to school yesterday, and everybody tells him he’s like a legend.”
Campero’s tweet thread has since collected almost 40,000 retweets and 140,000 likes.
According to Campero’s account, her brother kicked off his plan during a break from school.
Like a scene from any decent heist movie, the boy disconnected the Wi-Fi in the house to disable the security cameras for a safer getaway, she said.
The boy then drove the car to pick up his best friend, whose mother told Campero’s mother about his location. Campero accompanied her mother as they grabbed a belt and set off to find him.
“She wanted to find him before he wrecked the car and before the police did,” Campero said.
The search eventually led Campero’s mother to the boy’s girlfriend’s house. At some point, the boy aborted his initial plan to see his girlfriend, who was at the home with her mother when Campero arrived.
The girlfriend helped Campero’s mother track the boy down on the road. According to Campero’s video, the mother pulled up next to the boy and screamed “Pull over now!” on the road.
That’s when she stepped out of the car with her belt, opened the BMW’s driver-side door and unleashed on the boy.
“My mom said once she opened the door, he had a smirk on his face until she started spanking him,” Campero said.
Campero said her mother grounded the boy “until 2019 or further notice.”