Schoolboy who stopped drunk-driver and took his keys told by police he 'did the wrong thing'

A teenage schoolboy who took a set of keys away from a drunk driver has been told by Victoria Police that he did the wrong thing.

Lachlan phoned 3AW radio host Neil Mitchell on Thursday to explain what he did when he saw a van driving erratically in front of him, failing to correct turns, hitting multiple gutters and narrowly missing another driver.

After the driver ended up on the footpath, Lachlan said he pulled up alongside him and asked him if he was alright.

“As soon as he stepped out of the car, he was slurring his words, he was stumbling around,” Lachlan said, adding that he could smell alcohol.

“I told him he’s in no right mind to drive … so he gave me his keys, he said take them, so I moved his car up the street."

The Melbourne teen soon realised he recognised the driver too, claiming he was the traffic warden man at his previous school.

The pair then arranged a time to meet up the following morning so Lachlan could return the keys.

After returning home for a brief moment to tell his dad what happened, the 18-year-old made his way down to the local police station to do so once again.

“I basically told her the story… she’d laughed through the whole story, she said ‘look you really shouldn’t have taken that key, you need to go give that back’.”

Facing a moral dilemma, the teen said he contemplated ignoring the officer’s request before eventually returning to the scene to find the intoxicated man still sitting there.

The teen eventually handed back the key along with a stern lecture to a man at least three times his age.

But when he returned hours later, the van was gone.

Mitchell labelled the exchange as a “failure” on the part of Victoria Police.

“That’s a ridiculous situation, I don’t understand why the police couldn’t have gone down and checked him,” Mitchell added.