Man Held in Joyride to Topless Bar in Stolen Ambulance

Bryan Joseph Kryscio, a 51-year-old homeless man from Pontiac, was straightforward when asked to explain his joyride in a stolen ambulance:

“He told the deputy he was hoping to go to the Booby Trap to see some pole dancing,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told The Oakland Press, adding, “You can’t make this up.”

Kryscio’s adventure began about 11 p.m. Sunday with an alleged crime of opportunity.

A pair of Star EMS ambulance drivers had left the engine running in their rig when they parked it outside the emergency room entrance of Pontiac’s McLaren Oakland Hospital, 673 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. N., and abandoned it briefly to transport a patient on a gurney.

Kryscio had made it about 16 miles in the ambulance by the time police caught up with him in the area of 14 mile and Ryan in Sterling Heights. He was about 15 miles away from his targeted destination at 141 Eight Mile Road in Detroit. The Booby Trap is now defunct, but another club, The King of Diamonds, is operating at that address, The Detroit News reports.

Police said Kryscio was cooperative when he was apprehended.

He was arraigned Tuesday in 50th District Court in Pontiac on a charge of unlawfully driving away of an automobile, and was given a $5,000 cash or surety bond on the condition that he wear a GPS tether upon release.

His preliminary hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Dec. 9 before Judge Preston Thomas, also in 50th District Court.

The sheriff’s office said in a news release that Kryscio has a prior conviction in Florida, and charges of breaking and entering, possession of marijuana and several convictions for trespassing in Michigan.

Bouchard, the Oakland County sheriff, credited cooperative police work between his department and the Sterling Heights Police Department to recover the ambulance, which was returned to Star EMS. Police used the GPS tracking on a cell phone left in the vehicle to locate it.

“Obviously an ambulance not only has expensive items in it, including drugs, it’s an expensive vehicle by itself,” he said.

The ambulance wasn’t damaged and nothing appeared to have been taken.

_____

Photo: Oakland County Sheriff’s Office