A nightmare for an East Meadow newlywed

The car had been gutted. East Meadow resident Kimberly Ackerman had reported that she believed her 2000 Honda Civic had been stolen from her driveway on the night of Jan. 24 as she and her new husband slept peacefully. When the police called to say they’d found her car but it “wasn’t drivable,” she definitely wasn’t prepared for what she was about to see.

“They didn’t tell me what it looked like,” she said, her voice shaking. “I loved my car. It was a part of me. I cried my eyes out.”

Ackerman and her husband, Timothy Bila had just returned from their honeymoon in Mexico. She had just graduated from C.W. Post with a master’s degree in Clinical Art Therapy, had a glorious wedding and honeymoon and had planned to start looking for a job. 

But as Ackerman said, “it’s kind of hard now to look for a job when you don’t have the means to look.”  

She didn’t report the car missing because at first, Ackerman said she believed her father had borrowed the car during the night, something he often did on weekends. It was Monday when she realized that he didn’t have it; that the car had probably been stolen.

“I called my neighbors across the street who said they went to bed late that night but didn’t hear anything,” she said. “This neighbor usually hears things. Nobody else on the block saw or heard anything either. When I saw my car I noticed it had ice and snow on the front of it. They didn’t drive it away.”

Ackerman said her car was locked. She explained that her alarm was sensitive, so much so that she often had trouble turning it off when it was activated. Ackerman suspects the thief took her car using a tow truck. 

“They took the whole front off and only left the frame,” Ackerman said. “I didn’t have theft insurance because I didn’t know that my type of car was what people would want. And you know I never had any bad experiences in East Meadow. I’ve lived here nearly my whole life.”