What began as a workplace mystery over fresh scratches appearing on a black truck ended with police confronting a coworker who was allegedly caught on camera walking up to the vehicle and damaging it.
According to the Cam Stories TV report, officers were called to a workplace after an employee was accused of intentionally damaging a coworker’s vehicle in the parking lot.
The case stood out because the truck owner said the damage had not happened once. It had been going on for weeks.
Scratches Kept Appearing On The Truck
In the bodycam footage shared by Cam Stories TV, Officer Ivy with the Lakewood Police Department met with the truck owner, who explained that the black vehicle belonged to him but was driven by his wife, Deanna Diaz.
The owner told Officer Ivy that his wife worked with the suspect, but there was no real relationship between them. He said Diaz mostly kept to herself, did her job, and went home.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but my vehicle’s been getting scratched,” he told the officer in the footage.
He said he washed the truck about once a week and kept noticing more damage. At first, he had dash cameras installed, but those cameras did not catch the person responsible.
So his wife found a more direct solution.
According to the husband, Diaz rigged up her phone to record the side of the truck, using a reflection angle to capture whoever might be approaching it. The setup was simple, almost improvised, but it worked.
The video showed a truck passing by, then a woman walking up to the vehicle. The owner told the officer that was the person they believed had been scratching the truck.
It is one of those small details that makes the story feel oddly modern. A $600 dash camera system reportedly missed the damage, but an older phone set up in the right spot caught the moment that mattered.
The Damage Was Not A Small Scratch
The truck owner walked Officer Ivy through the damage, pointing out scratches along several parts of the vehicle.
He said some of the damage had appeared days earlier, including one larger scratch that his wife noticed after seeing the same coworker running away from the truck. According to his account in the footage, the woman had been sent to another work area, and Diaz later found fresh damage on the vehicle.
The owner said the truck had been damaged from the front toward the rear, and he believed the entire vehicle would need to be repainted.
He explained that black paint is not as simple to match as some people may think. Because there are many shades of black, he said the repair could not just involve buffing one area or blending a few spots.
“The whole truck needs to be repainted,” he told Officer Ivy.
When the officer asked if the estimate would be above $5,000, the owner said yes, adding that the cost would be expensive given current repair prices.
That amount mattered because Officer Ivy later explained that the level of damage could turn the case into a felony.
The owner also said he wanted to press charges.
The Wife Described The Workplace Situation
During the encounter, the truck owner called his wife, Deanna Diaz, while standing with police.
Diaz told him she was still inside working and that the suspect was also still there. She said her bosses appeared to be keeping things quiet for the moment because they were short-staffed and needed the employee to finish serving patients.
Diaz gave police details about the suspect’s vehicle, describing it as a gold-colored Mercury and saying she believed it was parked on the same side of the hospital where she had parked.
She also told her husband to stay calm.
“I don’t want to end up getting in trouble for you going out of control,” she said over the phone, according to the footage.
The husband told her he was fine and that the officer was doing a good job under the circumstances. Still, he made clear he was angry and wanted the damage to stop.
That exchange added a human layer to the case. The frustration was not just about paint and repair bills; it was about someone feeling targeted at work and not knowing why it kept happening.
Officer Ivy Confronted The Suspect
When Officer Ivy spoke with the suspect, she first acted as if she did not know why police were there.
The officer told her they had been called because someone had been keying a black vehicle in the parking lot. When she asked what “keying” meant, Ivy explained that it meant using a key to scratch a vehicle’s paint.
She denied involvement.
Then Officer Ivy told her the owner had a camera pointed toward the vehicle and that it showed her walking up and scratching it.
At first, she still said it was not her and claimed she had been on her way to work. But after Ivy made clear that the footage existed, the conversation shifted.
Officer Ivy told her the issue could go one of two ways. If police believed she was lying, he said they could stop the conversation and handle it through jail. If she wanted to be honest, he said they could discuss what had happened and figure out the next step.
The suspect then began explaining that Diaz had allegedly been saying things about her and another friend at work.
She said the comments made her uncomfortable and that she did not know if Diaz was “getting at” her.
“Words” Turned Into A Felony-Level Problem
Officer Ivy pressed the suspect on why she did not use workplace channels such as HR instead of damaging the truck.
The suspect said Diaz had been “talking,” looking at her, and saying things about her and her friend. She said she had nothing against Diaz, but did not want to be near her.
Ivy pointed out that if there was a workplace issue, HR would have been the better option. He explained that HR could have told the other employee to stop, and nobody would have committed a crime.
Instead, he said, the suspect was now potentially facing a felony property damage case because someone had allegedly said words.
That part of the conversation is the center of the whole story. Workplace conflict can feel huge when people are stuck seeing each other every day, but scratching someone’s vehicle over comments or rumors changes the situation completely. It turns a personal grievance into a criminal matter with real costs attached.
The suspect eventually admitted what she used to scratch the truck.
When asked whether she used a key or a coin, she said she used an item she had with her, explaining that she was upset and irritated.
She also said she would apologize and do whatever it took to stay away from Diaz or pay for the damage, though she continued to say Diaz should have spoken to her directly.
Officer Ivy pushed back on that, saying the suspect also could have tried to communicate instead of damaging the truck.
When she suggested she was scared Diaz might do something to her, the officer told her that playing the victim did not work in that moment because she was the one accused of destroying the vehicle.
Police Sent The Case To Prosecutors
Officer Ivy told the suspect that if the damage reached $5,000, it could qualify as a Class B felony, which he described as a very serious level of crime.
He said police could have arrested and booked her into jail for felony vandalism if they wanted to take that route. Instead, he told her they were going to keep things as low-level as possible by writing a police report and forwarding it to the Lakewood prosecutor’s office.
The officer explained that if prosecutors decided to charge her, she would receive a letter in the mail with the charge and court date. If she failed to appear, he said, a warrant could be issued for her arrest.
The suspect asked him to break that down more clearly, saying she had a disability and needed help processing what he meant.
Officer Ivy then explained it again in simpler terms, telling her that the prosecutor would decide whether to move forward and that she would need to appear in court if charged.
Before ending the encounter, he warned her not to talk to Diaz, not to engage with her, and not to key any more cars.
“No more stupid stuff, please,” he told her.
The Cam Stories TV host reported at the end of the video that the woman was charged with seven counts of felony vandalism.
The case is not complicated in the way some criminal cases are. There was no major search, no long chase, and no hidden forensic mystery.
Instead, it came down to a coworker noticing a pattern, setting up a phone camera, and catching what police said was the proof they needed. A workplace rumor may have started the tension, but the damage to the truck is what turned it into a criminal case.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
