A San Antonio mother finds a loaded gun and ax in her rental vehicle, sparking police and Enterprise Rent-A-Car investigations.
SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio mother says she made a terrifying discovery inside her rental vehicle — a loaded gun and an ax — and now police and the rental company are investigating.
Roxanne Santoya said she had been driving the rental for more than a week before realizing what was inside. She had picked up the vehicle from an Enterprise Rent-A-Car near Bandera Road and Loop 410 after someone crashed into her parked car.
On Saturday, as she prepared to take her 9-year-old daughter to a birthday party, Santoya said she noticed something on the floorboard.
“I opened the door, pulled the seats forward to put my daughter in the car and I noticed something was on the ground right about there,” Santoya said.
It was a loaded gun — right below where her daughter would have been sitting.
“I wanted to throw up and cry at the same time because what if she would have touched it,” Santoya said. “What if she would have accidentally shot me, shot herself, shot a car passing by?”
Santoya said it wasn’t the first strange item she found in the vehicle. A few days earlier, she had discovered an ax under the driver’s seat.
“I don’t know if it made a noise or I felt something hit my foot,” she said. “So I pulled over, and that’s when I pulled out — almost two feet — an ax.”
While she initially brushed off the ax, finding the gun prompted her to call police. According to a San Antonio Police Department report, the gun was reported stolen.
“Just imagine if I would have got pulled over,” she said. “I take my daughter to school every morning. I’m on school grounds with a stolen gun. I could go to jail. They would probably call CPS on me.”
In a statement to KENS 5, Enterprise said it has policies in place to prevent incidents like this and that an internal investigation is underway.
“The safety of our customers is our top priority,” the company said. “We have a formal training process, which includes policies and procedures to ensure we check under seats and seat-back pockets, in the glove compartment, in the center console and the door compartments to inspect for belongings left behind from previous renters. We are investigating what went wrong in this case.
“We have reached out to the renter to apologize to her for this incident and to work with her on a satisfactory resolution.”
Santoya said she now double-checks every car she drives and encourages others to do the same.
“They have asked me, ‘What can we do to make it better?’” she said. “I told them this: put yourself in my shoes. If something would have happened to your kid, what could you do to make it better?”
Police confirmed the gun was turned over as evidence and they are working on locating the original owner.