Family's Truck Stolen; Found Burned On The Side Of I-35

It all started with an empty parking spot on a gloomy Monday morning.

“My wife went outside to check on the chickens and the horses and stuff, walked out and was like, where's your truck?” Matthew Phillips says. “It kind of just clicked that someone stole it.”

Like most people, they called police, and within a few hours their F-350 had been found.

Phillips says just as quickly as a smile came to his face, it disappeared.

“They called us back, saying, ‘Have they called you about you're truck yet?’ Well, we called to report it was stolen. he was like, ‘We found it,” Phillips says. “The interior of the drive side was caught on fire.”

The truck was located this afternoon, torched on the side of I-35 near the Robinson exit in Norman, and Phillips say it's still not clear if arson, or damage to the steering column is to blame for the blaze.

Thieves ripped wires out to get the truck started according to the owners, but it’s still a mystery as to how the truck got off the property in the first place.

“We're thinking they even might have tried to push it out of the drive way to make less noise. With it backed-up to the garage door, it goes through the house pretty good,” Phillips says.

Even more suspicious, the family says the truck’s tag had been removed, and switched out with another plate.

Three car seats were recovered by police, Matthew and Wendy say those belonged to each of their young children.

“They moved all three cars seats out of the backseats and threw them in the bed of the truck,” Phillips says.

The family won't get a chance to look at the car until Wednesday, and say one of the scariest things about this, their garage door opener was inside the F-350.

They fear that it could provide easy access to their home.

Phillips says they will be purchasing security cameras, just in case something like this happens again.