Sex Worker Stole Cop's Jeep. She Says He Was Just A 'Trick'

Taquanna Lawton has been charged with grand larceny for stealing an NYPD officer’s Jeep Wrangler in Brooklyn Tuesday morning after he left the vehicle to get money from an ATM to pay for her sex services.

As Lawton, 20, explains it, she and 13-year veteran officer Ali Sheppard had a business relationship and that he was nothing more than “a trick,” Brooklyn prosecutors said Friday, according to the New York Daily News.

“At the police station the defendant asserted she and the complainant knew each other (and) that the complainant was a trick,” Assistant District Attorney Tziyonah Langsam said as Judge Abena Darkeh ordered Lawton held on $25,000 bail. “The defendant and complainant are acquaintances.”

It all went down early Tuesday morning when Sheppard picked up Lawton and was on the way to an East New York hotel. He pulled over to get some cash from a corner ATM.

That’s when Lawton got behind the wheel and drove off.

“(Sheppard) left the keys in the ignition,” Langsam said. “When the complainant returned to the vehicle, the defendant and the vehicle were no longer there.”

The officer’s service pistol was inside the vehicle and hasn’t been recovered as of Friday.

Here is more from the Daily News:

Cops found Lawton and the stolen SUV in Far Rockaway early Wednesday morning. A second woman was in the Jeep with her, along with a ziplock bag of crystal meth, prosecutors said.

The working girl was taken to the hospital for a check up Thursday night after she told police that she was pregnant.

Cradling an apparent baby bump and sporting a cheetah-print spaghetti strap top, Lawton said very little as she was charged with grand larceny and drug possession. She was also accused of violating her probation after being released on a stolen property charge in Nassau County.

Lawton is on probation until 2023, prosecutors said.

As for Sheppard, he has been suspended without pay for 30 days and is facing disciplinary charges, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said.