Eight-year-old boy drives four-year-old sister to McDonald's for a cheeseburger

An eight-year-old American boy who claims to have learned how to drive from YouTube videos twocked his dad’s van and took his four-year-old sister to McDonald’s last weekend.

Incredulous police in the small Ohio town of East Palestine told local media that the boy – who had never driven before – managed to cross four intersections and some railway tracks on a journey that was about a mile and a half in length. 

“He didn’t hit a single thing on the way there. It was unreal,” patrolman Jacob Koehler told the Weirton Daily Times, who responded to several reports from members of the public that a small boy was driving a van, following traffic laws – including correctly stopping at red lights and waiting for other vehicles to pass before making a left turn into the restaurant. The servers at the drive-through assumed they were being pranked, and that the children’s parents were in the back.

In fact, the boy had waited for his parents to fall asleep on Sunday afternoon, before swiping the keys from their hook on tiptoes and smuggling his sister out of the door at around 8pm.

Koehler found them at the restaurant, and allowed them to finish their meal before their grandparents, who had been notified by family friends who spotted the pair, arrived to take them to the local police station. 

He added that the boy had cried after he realised he’d done something wrong, and said he had just really wanted a cheeseburger – which he paid for with change from his piggy bank. 

They were collected from the station by their parents, with no charges filed as it wasn’t considered a case of neglect – the kids had even been fed three square meals that day.