A Good Samaritan has his car stolen while helping stricken man | Mullane

Matt Mullen admits his life hasn’t been the best. Even after what happened to him in Cherry Hill, heartless keyboard ninjas on social media brought up his past.

“They say things like, ‘Let’s not forget who we’re dealing with,’ stuff like that,” said Mullen, 27, who lives in Glassboro.

He talks, somewhat self-consciously, about his dark days of addiction, from Oxys to heroin to thefts and 11 and a half months in jail.

“I’d steal anything that wasn’t bolted down to support my habit,” he said.

In 2017, he was in a car crash that nearly killed him.

“Shattered my pelvis. Brain injuries. My neck’s all messed up,” he said. His fault, he said. “I was looking at my phone and blew through a stop sign.”

Enough was enough. After months of physical rehabilitation and learning to walk again, he decided to turn his life around.

“I’ve been clean for 14 months,” he said.

He got a job installing pools. When the pool season ended, he took a delivery gig for a pizza joint in Cherry Hill. But on Friday Nov. 5, things went bad on Kings Highway.

“I was making my last delivery of the night,” he said. “There’s this older gentleman … (who) has a urine (catheter) bag tied to his leg. He has a cane and he’s crossing Kings Highway at Elkins. And suddenly he trips, drops his cane and falls into the street.

“I was doing 60 and I swerved to avoid hitting him, had to slam my brakes,” he said.

He pulled the car onto Elkins, and rushed to help the old man in the street. He left the car running.

“All I was thinking was helping this guy. And there’s this younger kid and his mother in the Dollar General parking lot, and the kid comes over to help, too. And I pulled the guy from the road so he wouldn’t get hit by traffic,” Mullen said.

The old man was OK, and refused medical treatment. So Mullen returned to his car.

“It was gone. Just disappeared,” he said.

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He was stunned. He ran down Elkins looking for it. Then ran back to Kings Highway. Nothing.

“I’m saying to myself where’s my car? Where did I really park it? I was thinking I’m crazy, you know, questioning myself. Where’s my car?”

As he was pulling the old man from the highway, a car thief swiped his ride.

“Just hopped in and took off,” he said.

With the car went his phone, which he had left inside when he darted out to help the stricken man. It was later found on a street, apparently tossed by the thieves.

He had the 2007 Honda Civic a few months. He bought it with the money he had earned doing pool work. Its purchase was a milestone in his recovery.

“Now it was gone,” he said.

He had no way to back home to Glassboro.

“The police called me a taxi. Cost me $60 bucks out of my pocket,” he said.

The Honda was later found in Camden.

“It had been totaled in a crash at an intersection, 6th and State. They didn’t even have it two hours before they wrecked it,” he said.

Witnesses saw two men dash from the car and disappear into the city.

Later, a person whose car had been hit in the crash came to Mullen’s mother’s house.

“They were carrying the insurance card they found in the car. They said, ‘Your car hit us.’ I told them, well, you’re not gonna believe what happened,” he said.

The wrecked Honda was taken to a tow yard. When he saw it the next day, its windows were smashed out. He retrieved personal items, but things had been taken.

“Someone even took the battery,” he said.

With no car, he was housebound. His mother launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money toward the purchase of another vehicle. But he couldn’t wait. He had to get back on the road.

Last week, he purchased a 2009 Toyota Camry for $8,000 cash, almost double what he had paid for the Honda.

“The used car market is so messed up right now. Everything’s so expensive,” he said.

About half the money came from the GoFundMe account, and the rest from his savings. He’ll leave the donations page up for a bit to try to recoup the money he used from his savings.

“I’m not bitter,” he said.

It’s easy to despair about that happened, but he’s philosophical.

“I literally just got out of my car to help some old dude who fell in the road and I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t gonna die,” Mullen said. “Thank God he’s not dead. But in helping that guy, someone else saw an opportunity, and they took advantage of it. I’m not mad at them.

“Every day I wake up, I try to do the right thing for the right reason. Things usually work out. I know, my car got stolen and all these bad things, but I just try to roll with the punches, you know what I mean? Terrible things happen, and it’s up to me to decide if this is the end of me, or another beginning.”

He’s decided on another beginning.

If you want to donate to Matt Mullen’s GoFundMe account, here’s the link or search "Matthew Mullen" on gofundme.com

Columnist JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington County Times: NJ good Samaritan helps old man, only to have his car stolen